Annual report - 2009

Brief Description of the results obtained in 2009:

 

      During 2009 we have continued studies based on results achieved in previous years of the project. Our team has published and presented new findings in a number of papers and at international meetings. Published results are focused mainly on results of numerical hybrid simulations of various processes in collisionless plasmas. Particularly, we investigated properties of several kinetic plasma instabilities, the role of Coulomb collisions in bi-Maxwellian plasmas and we further improved the global semi-kinetic model of the interaction between the solar wind and a small magnetosphere.  Results from these numerical simulations were consequently compared with observations from missions Cluster II, Helios or Ulysses. In the area of the preparation of experiments we have broadened our contacts with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and established new contacts with Technical University in Braunschweig. These contacts established within ESA PECS program allowed us to participate several consortia for future space missions (Solar Orbiter or JGO).
  Our project is also highly important collaboration between academical institutions and Czech industry. Our team with Czech Space research Centre company cooperates on development of flight hardware for space applications. Together with SPRINX Systems, a Czech IT company, we have designed and developed high-performance facility Amalka specifically configured for our numerical simulations of collisionless plasmas. Amalka has already allowed us to publish a number of key results in the field of our interest and consequently contributed to our participation in several scientific missions (BepiColombo, Solar Orbiter, Cassini, MESSENGER, or Artemis).