Thisbook offers eleven coordinated reviews on multi-scalestructure formation in cosmic plasmas in the Universe. Observations and theories of plasma structures are presentedin all relevant astrophysical contexts, from the Earth’s magnetosphere through heliospheric and galactic scales to clusters of galaxies and the large scalestructure of the Universe. Basic processes in cosmic plasmas starting fromelectric currents and the helicity concept governing the dynamics of magnetic structures in planet magnetospheres,stellar winds, and relativistic plasma outflows like pulsar wind nebulae andActive Galactic Nuclei jets are covered.
Themulti-wavelength view from the radio to gamma-rays with modern high resolutiontelescopes discussed in the book reveals a beautiful and highly informativepicture of both coherent and chaotic plasma structures tightly connected bystrong mutual influence. The authors are all leading scientists in theirfields, making this book an authoritative, up-to-date and enduring contributionto astrophysics.
Prof. Andé Balogh is Distinguished Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College, London and the past Director of the International Space Science Institute of Bern, Switzerland. His main research interests are solar and heliospheric magnetic fields, solar activity phenomena and the nature of heliospheric turbulence. Prof. Balogh has been a Principal Investigator on the Ulysses and Cluster space missions and is author and co-author of over 500 scientific papers on solar physics, space research and planetary physics; as well as editor of ten books, including eight volumes in Springer's Space Sciences Series of ISSI. His recent research has covered the measurements of the Sun’s magnetic flux and its dependence on the solar activity cycle.
Andrei Bykov is head of the High EnergyAstrophysics laboratory in the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology, Russian Academyof Sciences and professor of St.Petersburg State Politechnical University. His principal research interest
s aretheory and observations of processes in astrophysical objects with extreme energy release - supernovae, gamma-raybursts and clusters of galaxies. He is author and coauthor of over 200scientific publications, a book Turbulence, Current Sheets and Shocks in Cosmic Plasma and editorof four books on high energy astrophysics.
Jonathan Eastwood is a lecturer inthe Department of Physics at Imperial College London where he is a member ofthe Space and Atmospheric Physics research group. He has previously worked atUC Berkeley and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2012 he was the recipientof the COSPAR Zeldovich medal (Commission D) in recognition of his researchinto the physics of magnetic reconnection and collisionless shocks usingsatellite data.
Jelle Kaastra (PhD 1985, UtrechtUniversity) is a senior scientist at SRON, the Netherlands Institute for SpaceResearch and professor of high-energy astrophysics at Leiden University.He is an expert on high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of cosmic plasmas, and iscurrently principal investigator of the Reflection Grating Spectrometer onXMM-Newton and the Low-Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer on Chandra. Hehas an active track record on clusters of galaxies, active galactic nuclei andX-ray models for cosmic plasmas.
