Some basic aspects of the solar wind

Abstract

What follows is a compilation of two lectures given during the summer school of Oléron (France) on the solar corona and solar wind. Four decades of ongoing research on these hot topics cannot be summarized here. The scope of this chapter is to give some background and updated observations on the structure of the solar wind and some theoretical issues, which are both fundamental to understand stellar wind and transport of the energy in a collisionless plasma. © 2006 Springer.