Understanding the mechanism(s) responsible for heating the million-degree solar corona remains a fundamental problem in astrophysics. Despite recent advances in our understanding of coronal heating, essential questions remain unanswered. The PI plans to investigate whether a single impulsive heating function can address all observed X-ray and EUV emission in coronal active regions, or whether different heating functions are needed for different structures. Among other issues, she intends to study how the magnitude of the heating might be related to properties of the coronal loop, such as the loop length and the magnetic field strength along the loop, and whether heating scaling laws derived from active regions can be successfully applied to the full corona. The PI intends to couple an extensive analysis of multiple solar observations with 1D hydrodynamic simulations in order to model active region structures and the full solar corona.
The PI anticipates that the result of this work will be a greatly improved understanding of the magnitude and time scale of the energy release in the solar corona, which will in turn constrain theoretical coronal heating models. She intends for this work to be primarily completed by undergraduate and graduate students at Alabama A&M University (AAMU), a historically black university (HBCU). The PI will hold three yearly workshops for AAMU students (as well as other visiting undergraduate and graduate students) on data analysis techniques, numerical methods, and other topics needed to complete this proposed research. The PI will recruit undergraduate and graduate students from local high schools, other HBCUs, and minority conferences. This project will result in an increase in the exposure of space physics to under-represented minority students and support at least two graduate students completing their doctoral work.
