A rapid non-stochastic proton acceleration mechanism by electrostatic waves during the substorm activity in the magnetospheric tail is presented to explain the origin of energetic protons (up to MeV). The protons are accelerated normal to the neutral sheet. Near a reconnection point, however, the protons are also accelerated along the sheet by a second process.

The importance of electron beams in solar flare dynamics is well known. In order to understand the dynamics produced by beams it is essential to have a clear understanding of the role beam driven return currents play and whether electrostatic or inductive electric fields maintain the return current. We show that inductive electric fields are responsible for driving return currents under solar conditions.

A large fraction of the electrons which are accelerated during the impulsive phase of solar flares stream towards the chromosphere and are unstable to the growth of plasma waves. The linear and nonlinear evolution of plasma waves as a function of time is analyzed with the use of a set of rate equations that follow in time the non-linearly coupled system of plasma waves-ion fluctuations. The nonthermal tail formed during the stabilization of the precipitated electrons can stabilize the Anomalous Doppler Resonance instability and prevent the isotropization of the energetic electrons. The precipitating electrons modify the way the return current is carried by the background plasma. In particular, the return current is not carried by the bulk of the electrons but by a small number of high velocity electrons. For beam/plasma densities ≳ 10−3, this can reduce the effects of collisions and heating by the return current. For higher density beams where the return current could be unstable to current driven instabilities, the effects of strong turbulence anomalous resistivity is shown to prevent the appearance of such instabilities. Our main conclusion is that the beam-return current system is interconnected and how the return current is carried is determined by the beam generated strong turbulence.

For a meeting of people from such widely different fields, this Symposium has exhibited a remarkable degree of unity. There has been one key concept running as a thread throughout the Symposium: the concept of magnetic field line reconnection, or magnetic field line merging as I prefer to call it. It was dealt with directly in many papers, and many others dealt indirectly with it and various related aspects. The concept was applied in the Symposium to an amazing variety of objects and was examined from many points of view and by many different techniques. Magnetic field line reconnection or merging is a paradoxical concept. It clearly depends upon magnetohydrodynamics (MHD); for example, constraints imposed by the MHD relation between the magnetic field and the plasma flow are essential to set it up - without these constraints (if, for example, the electric field parallel to the magnetic field could assume any desired value) the problems we discuss under the heading of magnetic reconnection would merely be moderately complicated problems of magnetostatics. At the same time, departures from ideal MHD are also an essential and unavoidable part of the concept.

We summarize the discussion of the current status and future prospects of space and astrophysical plasma research prepared by the Panel on Space and Astrophysical plasmas, a part of the study on Physics administered by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. The Study on Physics is chaired by W. Brinkman of Bell Laboratories and will be completed in 1984.

At SibIZMIR, a stepwise commissioning of the Siberian Solar Radio Telescope is being under way (Smolkov, 1982a; Smolkov et al., 1983a). This special-purpose instrument is designed to: 1) survey and monitor during daylight hours the state of solar activity (SA) with high two-dimensional resolution on a real time basis in a wave band permitting maximum possible detectability of active regions (AR's) and flares (F's); 2) study structures and development of AR's by day and the time of their observation on the solar disk; 3) study F's; 4) study the three-dimensional pattern of development of AR's and F's jointly with the Sayan Mountain and Baikal Astrophysical Observatories of SibIZMIR (Smolkov, 1982b), and 5) to make a synoptic study of SA during one or several solar rotations in the interests of solving challenging problems of Solar Physics and STP.

It is shown that the existence of plasma density inhomogeneities (ducts) elongated along the magnetic field in coronal loops, and of Alfven wave dispersion, associated with the taking into account of gyrotropy U ≡ ω/ωi ≪ 1 (Leonovich et al., 1983), leads to the possibility of a quasi-longitudinal k⊥ < √U k‖ propagation (wave guiding) of Alfven waves. Here ω is the frequency of Alfven waves, ωi is the proton gyrofrequency, and k is the wave number. It is found that with the parameter ξ = ω2 R/ωi A > 1, where R is the inhomogeneity scale of a loop across the magnetic field, and A is the Alfven wave velocity, refraction of Alfven waves does not lead, as contrasted to Wentzel's inference (1976), to the waves going out of the regime of quasi-longitudinal propagation. As the result, the amplification of Alfven waves in solar coronal loops can be important. A study is made of the cyclotron instability of Alfven waves under solar coronal conditions.