To increase understanding of SEP transport, Ming Zhang, Ph.D., Florida Tech professor of physics and space sciences and his collaborators Hamid K. Rassoul, Ph.D., from Florida Tech and Gang Qin, Ph.D. from State Key Laboratory of Space Weather in China, have received NASA funding of just under $400,000 for a three-year project.
They will investigate the propagation of SEPs in the 3-dimensional heliospheric magnetic fields. The objective of this theoretical and data analysis project is to solve the mystery why some SEP events can come from CME or flare events that are not magnetically connected to the Sun, and why SEPs often form a uniform particle reservoir in the entire inner heliosphere. Their specific goal is to assess the role of cross-field diffusion in charged particle transport.
"We hope to extract the physics of particle acceleration and propagation in interplanetary space. In addition, the knowledge of energetic particle flow in the solar system will enhance our understanding of many high-energy astrophysical phenomena, such as cosmic rays, supernova remnants and gamma-ray emissions" said Zhang.
The project's educational value is in training graduate students in sophisticated space plasma modeling and data analysis.
Florida Tech grants bachelor's degrees in physics, pre-professional physics, space sciences, with options in solar, Earth, and planetary, astronomy and astrophysics, and astrobiology, and master's and doctoral degrees in physics or space sciences.