ACCELERATION OF THE SOLAR-WIND

Stellar winds are thought to be the primary mass loss process for most stars and to play a particularly important role in mass and angular momentum transfer in newly forming stars. The physical processes that account for the acceleration of such winds are therefore of fundamental importance in astrophysics but are at present poorly understood, even for the case of the Sun. The question of just how the solar wind is accelerated to hypersonic speeds has been one of the most fundamental questions of space science since the beginning of the space age and is still far from a definitive solution. In this present review I give a general overview of some of the problems associated with trying to understand the physics of solar wind acceleration, how these problems have been approached, and the kinds of observational and theoretical efforts needed to facilitate closure between theory and observation.