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The first SHOCK science workshop, titled “Heliospheric Plasma Kinetics: Simulation vs. Data”, was held May 12
th-14
th, 2014, at the Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Florence, Arcetri, just outside Florence.
The workshop brought together about twenty scientists from the SHOCK project, together with about five guest speakers, to discuss the current status of results from the SHOCK project, and to look forward to new challenges. The relaxed atmosphere of the venue allowed time for stimulating conversations and planning of new collaborations.
A major theme of the workshop was turbulence in the solar wind. Observations show that the solar wind supports waves across a large range of length scales, from MHD (i.e. fluid) scales to kinetic scales such as the particle gyroradius. One of the major aims of the SHOCK project is to reveal the importance of these small scales, and to promote the use of simulations in analysing observations. Other themes from the project were also covered, such as novel simulation techniques for turbulence and magnetic reconnection, models of collisions in the solar wind, simulations of solar wind kinetic instabilities, and the solar wind interaction with Mercury. A major step forward for the project was the description of the recently released Virtual Mission Laboratory (VML) which is a web-based application allowing access to, and visualization of simulation data produced by the project. The VML is now available from the project home page (main website menu ->
VML PORTAL).
The guest speakers included Roberto Bruno (Istituto Fisica Spazio Interplanetario, Rome) who discussed recent analysis of the frequency spectra of the solar wind magnetic field, and in particular the change in the spectra that are linked to the kinetics of protons. Luca Sorriso Valvo (LICRYL - INFM/CNR, Calabria) gave a review of the various, and varied, phenomena that can be found in solar wind turbulence, with an emphasis on the changes that are observed as one tries to look in more and more detail. That particular theme was continued by Christopher Chen (Imperial, London) who presented recent observations of solar wind density at high time resolution and at kinetic scales. Other guest speakers included Christian Mazelle (IRAP/CNRS, Toulouse) talking on Cluster observations of the Earth’s bow shock, Lorenzo Matteini (Imperial, London) who spoke on kinetic instabilities, and Stuart Bale (Berkeley, USA) and Marco Velli (JPL, USA) who spoke on the future Solar Probe Plus mission.
Date: 12.05.2014 - 14.05.2014
Venue: University of Florence, Largo Enrico Fermi 2, 50125 Florence, Italy
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