Andrei Bykov

Jelle Kaastra

Andre Balogh

Jonathan Eastwood

This book offers eleven coordinated reviews on multi-scale structure formation in cosmic plasmas in the Universe. Observations and theories of plasma structures are presented in all relevant astrophysical contexts, from the Earth’s magnetosphere through heliospheric and galactic scales to clusters of galaxies and the large scale structure of the Universe. Basic processes in cosmic plasmas starting from electric currents and the helicity concept governing the dynamics of magnetic structures in planet magnetospheres, stellar winds, and relativistic plasma outflows like pulsar wind nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei jets are covered. The multi-wavelength view from the radio to gamma-rays with modern high resolution telescopes discussed in the book reveals a beautiful and highly informative picture of both coherent and chaotic plasma structures tightly connected by strong mutual influence. The authors are all leading scientists in their fields, making this book an authoritative, up‐to‐date and enduring contribution to astrophysics.

Multi-scale Structure Formation and Dynamics in Cosmic Plasmas

The existence of soft excess emission originating from clusters of galaxies, de ned as em- sion detected below 1 keV in excess over the usual thermal emission from hot intracluster gas (hereafter the ICM) has been claimed since 1996. Soft excesses are particularly - portant to detect because they may (at least partly) be due to thermal emission from the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium, where as much as half of the baryons of the Universe could be. They are therefore of fundamental cosmological importance. Soft excess emission has been observed (and has also given rise to controversy) in a number of clusters, mainly raising the following questions: (1) Do clusters really show a soft excess? (2) If so, from what spatial region(s) of the cluster does the soft excess or- inate? (3) Is this excess emission thermal, originating from warm-hot intergalactic gas (at 6 temperatures of?10 K), or non-thermal, in which case several emission mechanisms have been proposed. Interestingly, some of the non-thermal mechanisms suggested to account for soft excess emission can also explain the hard X-ray emission detected in some clusters, for example by RXTE and BeppoSAX (also see Petrosian et al. 2008—Chap. 10, this issue; Rephaeli et al. 2008—Chap. 5, this issue).

Jelle Kaastra

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