The solar wind is the continuous outflow of ionized gas from the solar corona. Its flow patterns vary with solar cycle.
The most well-organized patterns occur during times of minimum solar activity when there are regions of steady fast
wind that originate from regions of open magnetic field lines. The solar wind is turbulent and fluctuations in the fast
solar wind mainly represent Alfven waves. The slow solar wind is rather unsteady, and originates near closed loops and
coronal streamers. This region is also associated with coronal mass ejections –one of the most significant forms of solar
activity. They carry enormous masses of plasma threaded by the magnetic field away into the interplanetary medium.
Further away from the Sun, these large-scale, dynamical plasma structures are commonly called interplanetary coronal
mass ejections and magnetic clouds form their subset. Magnetic clouds travel through the solar wind upon encounter
with the Earth's magnetosphere and can cause significant damage on the Earth inducing currents in pipelines and electric
networks, disturbing radio and satellite communication, etc. The presented project implies comprehensive study of the
magnetic clouds and large scale Alfven waves in the solar wind by means of analytical research and analysis of in-situ
data from various spacecraft missions. In particular we plan to study three concrete problems of the solar physics: selfsimilar evolution of magnetic clouds in the solar wind; the origin of low frequency sunward propagating Alfven waves
(as known they cannot have solar origin and should be generated by some local mechanism) and the resulting spectrum
of low frequency Alfven waves in the solar wind.