Home Page of Richard M. Thorne
Office: 7979 Mathematical Sciences Bldg.
Phone: 310 8255974; FAX: 310 2065219
Email: rmt@atmos.ucla.edu
Mailing address:
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, UCLA, 7127
MS,
Biographical Information:
Professor
Thorne has made research contributions covering a wide range of topics in space
plasma physics. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a co-chair of
the current GEM focus group on the Diffuse Aurora, a Co-I on the JUNO mission
to Jupiter, and a Co-I and theory lead on the ECT and EMFISIS Teams for the
NASA “Radiation Belt Storm Probes” mission.
Research Interests:
Most of my research involves the role of wave-particle interactions in collision-less space plasmas. Wave induced scattering is responsible for the injection and loss of energetic particles from the radiation belts of a planet, and the deposition of energy into the middle atmosphere. Wave-particle scattering also causes the transfer of energy from one particle population to another, and ultimately to stochastic acceleration processes at extremely high energies.
Upper
Atmosphere Response to Solar Activity
My Group at UCLA
Jacob Bortnik: Research Associate working on particle scattering by discrete waves.
Yuri Shprits: Research Associate working on radiation belt modeling during storms.
Binbin Ni: Post doc working on particle scattering and data assimilation.
Wen Li: Graduate student working on chorus excitation and electron scattering.
Dmitri Subbotin: Graduate student working on radiation belt modeling.
Lunjin Chen: Graduate student working on EMIC propagation and particle scattering.
Satellite Missions and Collaborative Projects outside UCLA:
JUNO: a NASA mission to study the interior of Jupiter and
its aurora.
RBSP: a NASA LWS mission to study electron variability in the radiation belts.
GEM Focus Group on
Diffuse Aurora
Modeling Jovian
Synchrotron Radiation