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DE-SC0021288: Solar system storms in the lab: creating a scaled interplanetary coronal mass ejection

Award Status: Expired
  • Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
  • UEI: GNJ7BBP73WE9
  • DUNS: 073133571
  • Most Recent Award Date: 08/13/2022
  • Number of Support Periods: 2
  • PM: Podder, Nirmol
  • Current Budget Period: 09/01/2021 - 07/31/2023
  • Current Project Period: 09/01/2020 - 07/31/2023
  • PI: Kuranz, Carolyn
  • Supplement Budget Period: N/A
 

Public Abstract

Researchers estimate that the Earth spends between 10% and 35% of the time traveling through Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections (ICMES), the vast systems of magnetized plasma that the Sun ejects into the Solar System. Given the destructive power of the geomagnetic storms that ICMEs cause, it is critical that we understand these systems well enough to predict them. This work will study these systems with scaled plasma physics experiments performed on the Big Red Ball at the DOE collaborative research facility Wisconsin Plasma Physics laboratory (WiPPL). To scale this scenario, an ICME moving through the diffuse magnetized plasma (the "ICME") into a field of magnetized plasma (the "interplanetary medium"). With a diameter of 3 meters, the Big Red Ball is the world's largest cusp device, capable of creating and confining over 10 cubic meters of stationary plasma. It is experimentally flexible, with multiple compact torus injectors (our means of launching our scaled "ICMES"), the ability to impose a parallel field anywhere from 0 to 275 G via a pair of Helmholtz coils, and an array of plasma diagnostics. This work will advance the growing field of magnetized flowing plasmas, systems where magnetic fields affect the movement of plasmas but do not confine them.



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