Investigating solar wind waves and plasma heating in the inner Heliosphere

The origin of the solar wind - the supersonic and hot plasma outflow emitted continuously by the Sun into the whole solar system - is still an open question, as well as the mechanisms responsible for the continuous heating of the plasma during its non-adiabatic expansion into interplanetary space.

This project aims at studying the properties of the solar wind plasma in the inner Heliosphere, exploiting new in situ data from recent space missions as the NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and ESA Solar Orbiter (SolO). The investigation will be based on the analysis of the high-resolution magnetic field and particle measurements made by instruments onboard these missions and will also exploit the closest PSP perihelia (from the end of 2024) and the first SolO observations outside the ecliptic plane (2025).

The project will develop on the characterization of the evolution of fields and particles during solar wind expansion, including for example their radial scaling, the associated plasma energy budget and the variation of the power spectra of the fluctuations at various distances from the Sun. The project will aim at identifying the role of magnetic field waves in the transport of energy with radial distance, their possible role in heating the plasma and the evolution of particle energetics in different solar wind streams.

It will be then be possible to directly compare the results from these studies with predictions by theoretical models.