ELECTRON AND PROTON KINETICS AND DYNAMICS IN FLARING ATMOSPHERES

Too often scientists cannot see the charged particles for the plasma when they study the Sun, stars, magnetospheres, interplanetary space, and laboratory experiments, says Zharkova (applied mathematics, U. of Bradford, Britain), but these invisible subatomic particles are behind all the macro phenomena such as temperature, density, and electric and magnetic fields. She investigates processes of non-equilibrium in flaring atmospheres with a consideration of particle kinetics, dynamics, and radiative processes. Among the topics are particle acceleration in flares, the continuity equation approach to electron-beam precipitation, hydrodynamic response to particle injection, microwave emission and polarization, non-thermal hydrogen emission caused by electron beams, and sunquakes associated with solar flares. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Valentina Zharkova is Chair of Applied Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics and Computing, University of Bradford, UK. Having obtained her M.Sc. degree from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev (NUK), Ukraine, and her Ph.D. degree from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, she worked for NUK for 20 years. In 1992, she moved to the University of Glasgow as a Royal Society Research Fellow and in 2000 to the University of Bradford. She authored over 200 scientific publications including the key one in Nature (issue 6683, 1998) on the discovery of solar quakes, which was covered by media worldwide. Professor Zharkova is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the European Physical Society and of the Editorial Board of the Journal on Knowledge-based Engineering Systems (KES).