An Introduction to Space Plasma Complexity

An Introduction to Space Plasma Complexity considers select examples of complexity phenomena related to observed plasma processes in the space environment, such as those pertaining to the solar corona, the interplanetary medium, and Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere. This book provides a guided tour of the ideas behind forced and/or self-organized criticality, intermittency, multifractals, and the theory of the dynamic renormalization group, with applications to space plasma complexity. There is much to be explored and studied in this relatively new and developing field. Readers will be able to apply the concepts and methodologies espoused in this introduction to their own research interests and activities.1. Introduction; 2. Dynamical criticality far from equilibrium and associated phenomena; 3. Physics of complexity; 4. Probability distribution and structure functions; 5. Partition functions, generalized dimensions, and singularity spectra; 6. Rank ordered multifractal analysis (ROMA); 7. Dynamic renormalization group and connection between criticality and multifractals; Finale.