An Introduction to Space Plasma Complexity (Cambridge Atmospheric and Space Science Series)

An Introduction to Space Plasma Complexity considers select examples of complexity phenomena related to observed plasma processes in the space environment, such as those pertaining to the solar corona, the interplanetary medium, and Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere. This book provides a guided tour of the ideas behind forced and/or self-organized criticality, intermittency, multifractals, and the theory of the dynamic renormalization group, with applications to space plasma complexity. There is much to be explored and studied in this relatively new and developing field. Readers will be able to apply the concepts and methodologies espoused in this introduction to their own research interests and activities.

Tom Chang is internationally known for his contributions to the physics of complexity, self-organized criticality, intermittent turbulence, and charged-particle acceleration processes in space plasmas. For thirty-five years, he has led theoretical geo/cosmo plasma research at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Senior Fellow of the American Physical Society and has been president of the Society of Engineering Science. He was the editor of the journal Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics and associate editor of Reviews of Geophysics, and he served for many years as an editor of the international journal Plasma Physics. He is the recipient of the National Thompson Award from ASTM and of certificates of recognition from the Society of Engineering Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.