Astrophysical Plasmas

The Universe is essentially made of hydrogen. In space, hydrogen gets easily ionized thereby producing a gas of protons and electrons called plasma. Space plasmas are strongly affected by electric and magnetic forces and as a result of that, a variety of rich physical processes occur.

At IAFE we study the dynamics of plasmas in several astrophysical environments from the analysis of spacecraft data, theoretical modeling and numerical simulations. We investigate phenomena such as turbulence, the generation of magnetic fields from the dynamo effect, the acceleration of charged particles due to magnetic recconnection, and plasma waves. We focus our research on astrophysical systems such as the solar upper atmosphere and corona, the solar wind, planetary magnetospheres and accretion disks.

Numerical modeling is made through simulation of the magnetohydrodynamic equations using codes developed at IAFE and run in the Institute’s CAPS (Cluster for Astrophysical Plasma Simulations) and HOPE clusters. This work is complemented with other areas of research that use other tools to study the Sun, planets and the interplanetary medium.

Figure: Heat map of vorticity in a turbulent plasma (Gomez et al., 2014)

In addition, measurements provided by spaccraft such as Mars Global Surveyor, Cassini, MAVEN, MMS, and STEREO are analyzed and interpreted in order to understand the physics of the heliosphere.

Figure: Titan’s magnetosphere according to the observations of the Cassini spacecraft (Bertucci, 2021)

On the other hand, the LAMP group (https://www.iafe.uba.ar/u/lamp/) also makes contributions to the study of dynamic processes in astrophysical plasmas, through in-situ measurements of plasma conditions and magnetic forces of the interplanetary medium. The group has made contributions to central topics in space plasmas, such as magnetic reconnection, relaxation and stability of metastable states in MHD, cross-scale coupling in turbulent processes, turbulent diffusion processes in plasmas, radiation levels in geo-space, among others.