Nonlinear MHD waves and turbulence in space plasmas
The vast interplanetary space, embedded with a collisionless plasma, is an ideal natural laboratory for studying nonlinear wave phenomena, such as the wave-wave interactions, wave-particle interactions, and the plasma turbulence. We are currently working on theoretical and numerical studies on nonlinear evolution of large amplitude MHD waves in space plasmas, in particular, those found in the solar wind. Among topics being discussed are modulational and decay instabilities of MHD waves, long time evolution, construction of mathematically feasible models pertinent to describing the MHD waves in space, analytical studies on the reduced systems (e.g. integrability analysis), and development of data analysis method based on the nonlinear models, such as the soliton transform of the observed solar wind data.

Interacting Alfven solitons in a reduced MHD system. The horizontal and vertical axes represent time and space, respectively. The system is initially given a random noise, from which several Alfven solitons grow due to the modulational instability. The solitons propagate as they repeatedly collide each other.

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