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Plasma Science and Engineering transforms fundamental scientific research into powerful societal applications, from materials processing and healthcare to forecasting space weather. Plasma Science: Enabling Technology, Sustainability, Security and Exploration discusses the importance of plasma research, identifies important grand challenges for the next decade, and makes recommendations on funding and workforce. This publication will help federal agencies, policymakers, and academic leadership understand the importance of plasma research and make informed decisions about plasma science funding, workforce, and research directions.

Magnetohydrodynamic Processes in The Solar Plasma provides comprehensive and up-to-date theory and practice of the fundamentals of heliospheric research and the Sun's basic plasma processes, covering the dynamics of the solar interior to its exterior in the framework of magnetohydrodynamics. The book covers novel aspects of solar and heliospheric physics, astrophysics and space science, and fundamentals of the fluids and plasmas. Topics covered include key phenomena in the solar interior such as magnetism, dynamo physics, and helioseismology; dynamics and plasma processes in its exterior including fluid processes such as waves, shocks, instabilities, reconnection, and dynamics in the partially ionized plasma; and physics and science related to coronal heating, solar wind, and eruptive phenomena. The content has been developed to specifically cover fundamental physics-related descriptions and up-to-date developments of the scientific research related to these significant topics. The book therefore provides the entire fundamental and front-line research aspects of solar and heliospheric plasma processes, mainly in the context of solar plasma, however, the content also has larger implications for the astrophysical plasma, and laboratory plasma, fluid dynamics, and associated basic theories. It also includes additional supplementary content such as key instruments and experimental techniques in the form of appendices, boxed-off key information highlighting the most fundamental and key aspects, and worked examples with additional question sets.Magnetohydrodynamic Processes in The Solar Plasma covers both the fundamentals of the topics included as well as up-to-date and future developments in this research field, forming an essential, foundational reference for researchers, academics, and advanced students, in the field of solar physics and astrophysics, as well as neighboring disciplines. - Applies fundamental solar science and research in magnetohydrodynamic processes to practice, and uses in teaching and research - Covers the latest developments in solar plasma processes in terms of both theoretical and fundamental aspects. - Includes the large cohort of plasma processes (e.g., waves, shocks, instabilities, reconnection, heating, magnetism, seismology) significant for the diverse scales of the plasmas and fluids. - Provides detailed physical and mathematical descriptions of the theories in each chapter, along with scientific details, which will enhance understanding of basic phenomena and aid in applying the practical content to current research

This volume presents the latest research results on solar prominences, including new developments on e.g. chirality, fine structure, magnetism, diagnostic tools and relevant solar plasma physics. In 1875 solar prominences, as seen out of the solar limb, were described by P.A. Secchi in his book Le Soleil as "gigantic pink or peach-flower coloured flames". The development of spectroscopy, coronagraphy and polarimetry brought tremendous observational advances in the twentieth century. The authors present and discuss exciting new challenges (resulting from observations made by space and ground-based telescopes in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century) concerning the diagnostics of prominences, their formation, their life time and their eruption along with their impact in the heliosphere (including the Earth). The book starts with a general introduction of the prominence “object” with some historical background on observations and instrumentation. In the next chapter, the various forms of prominences are described with a thorough attempt of classification. Their thermodynamic (and velocity) properties are then derived with emphasis on the methods (and their limits) used. This goes from the simplest optically thin case to the heavy radiative treatment of plasmas out of local thermodynamic equilibrium. The following chapters are devoted to the magnetic field measurements and indirect derivation. A new branch of diagnostic tools, the seismology, is presented along with some MHD basics. This allows to better understand the propagation of waves, the energy and force equilibria. Both small-scale and large-scale studies and their relationship are presented. The importance of the newly discovered cavities is stressed in the context of prominence destabilization. The issues of prominence formation and eruption, their connection with flares and Coronal Mass Ejections and their impact on the Earth are addressed on the basis of the latest results. Finally, an exciting new area of research is unveiled with the newly discovered evidence of similar manifestations in the Universe and their possible impact on the habitability of exoplanets. References to the basic physics (where necessary) are provided and the proposed web sites addresses will allow the reader to load exciting movies. The book is aimed at advanced students in astrophysics, post-graduates, solar physicists and more generally astrophysicists. Amateurs will enjoy the many new images which go with the text.

This volume contains the invited papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on the Theory of Sunspots, held in Cambridge, England, 22-27 September 1991. The idea of holding this Workshop first arose during the Solar Optical Telescope work shop on Theoretical Problems in High-Resolution Solar Physics in Munich in 1985. At that meeting, separate discussion groups were formed to consider specific topics in solar physics. The discussion group on sunspots recommended that there be a meeting devoted to theoretical problems associated with sunspots, the motivation being the consensus that theory seemed to lag behind the observational evidence in our quest for a satisfactory un derstanding of the physics of sunspots. This recommendation was warmly received and the two of us were designated to organize the Workshop. Although the Workshop eventually took place later than originally envisioned, the de lay turned out to be fortunate and the timing of the Workshop was ideal for a number of reasons. There have been remarkable improvements in high-resolution observations of sunspots in the past few years, and many important new observational results were pre sented for the first time at this Workshop (by groups working at the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories, the Swedish and German telescopes in the Canary Islands, and the V. S. National Solar Observatory). Vector magnetographs and Stokes polarimetry have at last given us reliable measurements of the vector magnetic fields in sunspots.

Comprised of lectures for an intensive course held at the Newton Institute in Cambridge, as part of a NATO Advanced Study Institute, the topics covered within this volume include planetary and solar dynamos, fast dynamos, and the use of symmetry principles to derive evolution equations.

Most of the solar system is in the plasma state and its subtle non-linear interaction with the magnetic field is described for many purposes by the equations of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Over the past few years this important and complex field has become one of the most actively pursued areas of research, with increasingly diverse applications in geophysics, space physics and astrophysics. This book examines the basic MHD topics, such as equilibria, waves, instabilities and reconnection and examines each in the context of different areas that utilize MHD. Many of the world's leading experts have contributed to this volume, which has been edited by two of the key enthusiasts. It is hoped that it can help the reader to appreciate and understand the common threads between the different branches of magnetohydrodynamics. This book will be a timely exposition of recent advances made in the field.