The NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission was launched in 2018 and has made 25 orbits of the Sun with perihelion altitudes down to 8.9 solar radii above the solar photosphere. An increasingly plausible picture is emerging of where the solar wind originates, how it is initially energized, and the plasma physics of the extended wind heating process. In this scenario, the fast solar wind originates by magnetic reconnection at intense bundles of field energy associated with the supergranulation convection cells. The emerging wind generates Alfven waves, by the reconnection process, shearing instabilities, or phase speed gradients. These Alfven waves grow to large amplitude dB/B 1 by a combination of plasma expansion and conservation of wave action. The large nonlinear Alfven waves generate small scale turbulence that results in plasma wave heating, which provides the thermal energy to counteract the cooling of expansion. I will review some of the key PSP results that underpin this scenario and I will show some new results indicating the origin of ’slow’ solar wind.
The Parker Solar Probe mission : What we have learned from our first visit to a star
Lundi 1er décembre 2025
de
11:00 à
12:00
Salle de Conférence, Château de Meudon et visioconférence
