Origin of the solar wind: Astrophysical and plasma-physical aspects of the problem

At what evolutionary stage of the Sun as a star the accumulation of its matter from the interstellar medium ended and the dominant outflow of solar wind (SW) streams started is one of the main outstanding questions in the astrophysical aspect of the problem of SW origin. It is unknown when and how this happened in detail, although the onset of thermonuclear reactions in the solar interior undoubtedly played a crucial role in the energetics and dynamics of the star, which could lead to such a change of the regimes. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the accretion or plasma outflow from the star was determined by the preceding evolution, i.e., by the “memory“ and not just by the distribution of instantaneous density, temperature, magnetic field, and other macroscopic parameters of the system that consists of this star, its nearest stellar environment, and interstellar gas. Depending on this, neighboring stars can serve as donors or acceptors of interstellar gas. Some of them can simultaneously or alternately play both roles. The polytropic solution for centrally symmetric flows obtained by Bondi is degenerate in the sign of the radial velocity. It is suitable for describing the quasi-stationary regimes of both types. However, the theory of transient processes has not been developed. Hence, the question of whether there exist stars similar in their internal structure and parameters to the present-day Sun but without stellar wind emission or even with interstellar gas accretion can be answered only observationally. The possibility that such stars exist is not ruled out; it does not contradict any laws of nature. The plasma-physical aspect of the problem of SW origin concerns much shorter time intervals than the main evolutionary time scale measured in billions of years. Hence, this aspect of the problem has been studied much better, although it is also fairly complex and has not yet been solved in much detail due to the multi-scale character of the flow formation processes. The SW as a permanent supermagnetosonic plasma outflow in the radial direction appears against the background of much more powerful nonequilibrium and unsteady motions, which are ordered only partially in the upper solar atmosphere and corona (turbosphere). The instantaneous SW state is controlled by the fluxes of free energy, matter, and momentum that enter the corona from the convection zone and underlying solar atmospheric layers. Although the main physical mechanisms of the transport of free energy of the electromagnetic field and plasma are generally well known, they need a quantitative analysis as applied to specific realizations in frequent and rare particle collisions in the solar corona to ascertain the nonlocal processes of the formation of fields and plasma flows, including the SW.