Space Physics Seminar winter-2016

Plasma Boundaries: A Bridge Between Macro-Scale and Micro-Scale Physics

Space plasma physics research is frequently focused on either macro-scale or micro-scale processes, often treating them as independent. Yet recent advances in spacecraft instrumentation, simulation, and laboratory studies are breaking down that paradigm, demonstrating that interactions between large and small scales are critical for understanding and predicting the behavior of systems as diverse as the solar wind, the terrestrial magnetosphere, and laboratory plasmas. In each of these systems, plasma boundaries act as a bridge between physical scales. Macro-scale plasma motions drive boundary formation, micro-scale instabilities develop or are spatially sorted as a consequence of these boundaries, and finally, the aggregate effects of many micro-scale interactions modify the macro-scale system. Examples of interaction between macro- and micro-scale physical processes mediated by plasma boundaries in terrestrial inner magnetosphere, the solar wind, and laboratory plasmas will be discussed, with a focus on observational data.