Understanding the Solar Wind

Abstract

Heating of the extended solar corona leads to high proton temperatures and relatively low electron temperatures. This is due to the low heat conductivity in the proton gas as compared to the electrons. To a fairly good approximation we can say that the energy flux added to the electrons is conducted back into the transition region and lost as radiation, whereas the energy flux deposited in the protons is lost as kinetic and gravitational energy flux in the solar wind flow. How this energy flux is divided between gravitational and kinetic energy flux (i.e. how large are the particle fluxes and flow speeds) depend upon details of the heating process. However, we find that if energy is dissipated over more than one coronal scale height most of the energy goes into accelerating the solar wind. The low electron temperature that results in this sort of model is consistent with a small polarization electric field and a small electron heat flux in the solar wind acceleration region. Thus, the electron gas may play only a minor role for the force and energy balance of the solar wind.KeywordsSolar WindEnergy FluxAlfven WaveProton TemperatureCoronal TemperatureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.