Research Interest
Coronal heating has been a myth for several decades. The temperature of solar atmosphere at the photo
sphere
is about only 5000 degrees. However, it reaches about 1 million degree in less than 20000 km above the photosphere.
What physical processes are responsible for such a heating?
My main research interest is the coronal heating and solar wind acceleration.
For this purpose, multi-fluid solar wind modeling is the one of the key tools to understand physical
processes
in the corona and interplanetary space.
One of my major scientific contributions is to find that
oxygen ions are not only much faster than protons
in the inner corona, and they have a large temperature anisotropy as well.
This discovery greatly changes our view of the coronal heating and solar wind acceleration mechanism.
Now the preferential acceleration of minor ions in the solar wind
is now a well-known fact, even though it is quite counterintuitive.
Special attention is paid to the role of
ion cyclotron resonance and
electromagnetic
instabilities in regulating the acceleration and thermal anisotropies of
the solar wind ions.
I developed a 16-moment
solar wind model to study the anisotropy of protons in the fast solar wind.
I am also interested in the broad space plasma physics, such as propagation
of plasma waves, plasma instabilities.
We are actively working on the thermal equilibrium of transition region ions and characteristics of
the spectral lines of those species. An improved understanding of these ions may be a key for us to unlock the
secrets of the corona heating myth.
Here is my old publications.