Corotating Interaction Regions

de A. Balogh

This volume gives a comprehensive and integrated overview of current knowledge and understanding of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) in the solar wind. It is the result of a workshop at ISSI, where space scientists involved in the Ulysses, Pioneer, Voyager, IMP-8, Wind, and SOHO missions exchanged their data and interpretations with theorists in the fields of solar and heliospheric physics. The book provides a broad synthesis of current understanding of CIRs, which form at the interface between the fast solar wind originating in the northern and southern coronal holes and the slow solar wind that originates near and within coronal streamers surrounding the heliomagnetic equator. CIRs are the dominant structure in the heliosphere near and beyond Earth on the declining phase and near the minimum of the 11-year solar activity cycle. Particles energized at the shocks that bound CIRs at heliospheric distances beyond the orbit of Earth are the dominant energetic particle population observed in the outer heliosphere at these times. Papers included in this volume cover the subject of CIRs from their dissipation in the outer hemisphere, and include discussions of complexities associated with their evolution with distance from the Sun, their three-dimensional structure, and the myriad effects that CIRs have on energetic particles throughout the heliosphere. The book is intended to provide scientists active in space physics research with an up-to-date status report on current understanding of CIRs and their effects in the heliosphere, and also to serve the advanced graduate student with introductory material on this active field of research.