Princeton Center for Heliophysics Seminar

This talk will provide an overview of recent progress in understanding heating of the inner heliosphere via turbulent dissipation. NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission, launched in 2018, has comprehensive in situ instrumentation that has enabled high fidelity observations of kinetic scale dissipation of the corona and "young" solar wind. Significant populations of ion-scale circularly polarized waves are regularly observed by PSP and are thought to correspond to both ion-cyclotron and fast-magnetosonic modes. The use of standard quasilinear approximations has enabled the estimate of the heating rates associated with these waves, which appear similar to the large scale turbulent cascade rates. Furthermore, the mediation of turbulent signatures at kinetic scales by these waves suggests that these waves provide a major pathway for dissipation and plasma heating. The limitations of this method, future work, and outstanding problems in understanding kinetic processes, will additionally be discussed.