Eugene Parker first coined the existence of a “solar wind” in 1958, theorizing that the Sun’s corona emits a constant stream of charged particles as a plasma. Since then, heliophysicists have been working to describe the mechanisms, phenomena, and structures that occur due to the solar wind.

One of these structures is the critical point at which the corona transitions to becoming the solar wind, called the Alfvén surface (or Alfvén critical point), named after Hannes Alfvén. Parker Solar Probe (PSP), launched in 2018, was the first spacecraft to penetrate the Alfvén surface and obtain readings across the Alfvén surface and inside the corona, giving physicists a wealth of data to explore.

My research focuses on electron behavior across the critical point and if/how they deviate from expected behavior. I do this using results from PSP using the SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons, Protons, and Alphas) instrument suite and performing statistical and numerical analyses and calculations.