THOR (Turbulent Heating ObserveR) kick-off meeting

Organisateurs: Andris Vaivads (Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala) & Olga Alexandrova (LESIA)

October 9/10 in Paris will be organized 2 days workshop on how to address the topic of turbulent energy dissipation and particle acceleration with future ESA satellite missions. The workshop is part of the THOR mission proposal preparation. The goal of the workshop is to discuss the detailed science questions and the necessary s/c mission scenario and payload to address those. The workshop will bring together the european experts on turbulence theory, numerical simulations, space observations and instrument building.

Almost all visible matter in space is in plasma state and most of the energetic processes in the universe occur in plasma environments. While there may be large uniform regions in space showing laminar behaviour, most of the plasma environments are in a turbulent state where turbulent fluctuations are continuously generated and dissipated. Energy is cascaded from large to small scales where it may heat plasma and accelerate particles. For example, solar wind turbulence is driven at large scales close to Sun and through cascading to smaller and smaller scales turbulence dissipates at kinetic scales throughout the whole heliosphere. In contrast, turbulent fluctuations at shocks may be generated at kinetic scales and they may dissipate very close to their generation region. In general, the dissipation due to the turbulent fluctuations is believed to be one of the main processes of plasma heating and particle acceleration in different astrophysical as well as laboratory plasma environments.

We will discuss possible mission scenario in order to address the problem of dissipation in turbulent plasmas and particle acceleration.