Space Plasma Physics: A Review

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  • Bruce T. Tsurutani
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
  • Gary P. Zank
    Department of Space Science, Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research, The University of Alabama at Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, USA
  • Veerle J. Sterken
    Department of Physics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
  • Kazunari Shibata
    School of Science and Engineering, Doshisha University, Kyotanabe, Japan
  • Tsugunobu Nagai
    Department of Solar System Sciences, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan
  • Anthony J. Mannucci
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
  • David M. Malaspina
    Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
  • Gurbax S. Lakhina
    Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Navi Mumbai, India
  • Shrikanth G. Kanekal
    NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
  • Keisuke Hosokawa
    Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan
  • Richard B. Horne
    British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, U.K.
  • Rajkumar Hajra
    Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India
  • Karl-Heinz Glassmeier
    Institute of Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
  • C. Trevor Gaunt
    Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
  • Peng-Fei Chen
    School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
  • Syun-Ichi Akasofu
    International Arctic Research Center, Fairbanks, AK, USA

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Description

Owing to the ever-present solar wind, our vast solar system is full of plasmas. The turbulent solar wind, together with sporadic solar eruptions, introduces various space plasma processes and phenomena in the solar atmosphere all the way to the Earth's ionosphere and atmosphere and outward to interact with the interstellar media to form the heliopause and termination shock. Remarkable progress has been made in space plasma physics in the last 65 years, mainly due to sophisticated in-situ measurements of plasmas, plasma waves, neutral particles, energetic particles, and dust via space-borne satellite instrumentation. Additionally high technology ground-based instrumentation has led to new and greater knowledge of solar and auroral features. As a result, a new branch of space physics, i.e., space weather, has emerged since many of the space physics processes have a direct or indirect influence on humankind. After briefly reviewing the major space physics discoveries before rockets and satellites, we aim to review all our updated understanding on coronal holes, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which are central to space weather events at Earth, solar wind, storms and substorms, magnetotail and substorms, emphasizing the role of the magnetotail in substorm dynamics, radiation belts/energetic magnetospheric particles, structures and space weather dynamics in the ionosphere, plasma waves, instabilities, and wave-particle interactions, long-period geomagnetic pulsations, auroras, geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), planetary magnetospheres and solar/stellar wind interactions with comets, moons and asteroids, interplanetary discontinuities, shocks and waves, interplanetary dust, space dusty plasmas and solar energetic particles and shocks, including the heliospheric termination shock. This paper is aimed to provide a panoramic view of space physics and space weather.

Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (2022)

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