How tomorrow’s satellites can reveal crucial details on how solar flares are created

Øystein Færder, Space Physics Group, IFT

Abstrakt:

Several features of the Sun, including the huge explosions known as solar flares and the 1-million-kelvin temperature of  solar corona, are likely to be explained by the process of magnetic reconnection. During this process, current sheets tends to break up in smaller elements, leading to the formation of magnetic islands, known as "plasmoids". In the corona, these plasmoids are often too small to be seen by most currently-active solar telescopes, but simulations show that plasmoid instability has a significant impact on the amount of magnetic energy that gets converted to heat. Our research proves that  the satellites Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) and Solar-C, due to launch in a few years from now, will be capable of detecting and studying those plasmoids in details, hence bringing us one step closer to solving the mysteries of coronal heating and solar flares.
 

Bio:

Øystein finished his Master's Degree in Solar Physics at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics (ITA) at the University of Oslo (UiO) in 2012, where he studied simulations of the solar atmosphere and how the heating of the solar corona depends on the complexity of the magnetic fields on the solar surface. In the following 7 years, he worked in the industry as a softwar tester, delivering quality assurance to IT solutions at Equinor ASA. In 2019, he decided to proceed his academic career by taking a PhD fellowship in Solar Physics at the recently-established Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics (RoCS) at ITA. During this PhD felloiwship, he ran more numerical simulations to study in details the process of magnetic reconnection on the Sun. He achieved his PhD degree in May 2024 and is now working as a Post-Doctoral researcher in high-energetic atmospheric physics at the Department of Physics and Technology (IFT) at the University of Bergen (UiB).