Microphysics of Cosmic Plasmas

Foreword.- Microphysics of Cosmic Plasmas: Background, Motivation and Objectives.- Microphysics in Astrophysical Plasmas.- Turbulence and Instabilities in the Solar Wind.- Solar Surface and Atmospheric Dynamics: The Photosphere.- MHD Turbulence and the Generation of Magnetic Fields.- Microphysics of Cosmic Ray Driven Plasma Instabilities.- Nonclassical Transport and Particle-field Coupling: from Laboratory Plasmas to the Solar Wind.- Collisional and Radiative Processes in Optically-Thin Plasmas.- Evolution in Our Understanding of Collisionless Reconnection and Its Connection with Turbulence.- MHD Reconnection in Complex and Turbulent Fields.- Hierarchies of Plasma Instabilities: MHD to Kinetic Scales.- In-situ Observations of Reconnections in Space.- Kinetic Structure of Current Sheets in Earth's Magnetotail.- Mechanisms of Spontaneous Reconnection: from Magnetospheric to Fusion Plasma.- Topics in the Microphysics of Relativistic Plasmas.- Radio Astronomy and Plasma Diagnostics of the Interstellar Medium.- Microphysics of Quasi-parallel Shocks in Collisionless Plasmas.- Dynamic Quasi-perpendicular Shocks: Cluster Discoveries.- Collisionless Shocks in Partly Ionized Plasma with Cosmic Rays: Microphysics of Non-thermal Components.- Electron-Ion Temperature Equilibration in Collisionless Shocks: the Supernova Remnant-Solar Wind Connection.- Methods for Characterizing Microphysical Processes in Plasmas.- Laboratory Astrophysics: Investigation of Planetary and Astrophysical Maser Emission.

André Balogh is Emeritus Professor of Space Physics in Imperial College London and a past Director of the International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland. He has participated in numerous scientific space missions since the mid?1960s and has been a Principal Investigator on the Ulysses and Cluster missions. His principal research interest is the observation and study of magnetic fields in the heliosphere and in planetary environments. He is author and co?author of over 450 scientific publications and editor of seven books on solar system topics.

Prof. Andrei Bykov is head of the High Energy Astrophysics laboratory at the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology at the Russian Academy of Sciences and professor of St. Petersburg State Politechnical University. His principal research interests are theory and observations of processes in astrophysical objects with extreme energy release ? supernovae, gamma?ray bursts and clusters of galaxies. He is author and coauthor of over 200 scientific publications, including the book 'Turbulence, Current Sheets and Shocks in Cosmic Plasma' and editor of four books on high energy astrophysics.

Prof. Peter Cargill is an Emeritus Professor of Physics and an Imperial College and Honorary Professor of the Mathematical Institute at the University of St. Andrews. He is also part of the Space and Atmospheric Physics Group and the Blackett Laboratory.

Prof. Richard Dendy is the Director (jointly with Prof. S. C. Chapman) of Warwick University's Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics, and the Head of Theoretical Plasma Physics at Euratom/UKAEA Fusion Association's Culham Science Centre. He is a commissioner of the Marshall Scholarships program and an Honorary Professor of Physics at Kyushu University in Japan. Prof. Dendy is also Vice-Chair of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.

Prof. Thierry Dudok de Wit is a