The Principal Investigator will provide travel support for eight students and postdocs to attend the Fifth Coronal Loops Workshop to be held in Mallorca, Spain in 2011. This 2011 meeting is very timely, coming about a year after the 2010 launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. SDO has dramatically improved our ability to observe activity in the solar corona, and its data are now widely available to the public.
The Coronal Loops Workshop will provide a broad community service by giving solar physics theorists and observers the opportunity to develop collaborations, confront opposing views and test them, and ultimately inspire new investigations to address open scientific questions. Since 2002, when the Coronal Loops Wokshop series originated, the venue has become an ideal setting for researchers to discuss in detail the basic physical processes behing the formation, dynamics, and evolution of coronal loops in solar active regions.
An open mailing list developed by the Coronal Loops Workshop community communicates with over 170 scientists worldwide, allowing those researchers to continuously exchange ideas, new results, publications, and information on coronal loops research.
The workshop has traditionally been supportive of the attendance and participation of Ph.D. students and young postdocs. This meeting will therefore create meaningful opportunities for students and young scientists to engage experts in the field, and ultimately to become key participants in the next generation of solar physics research.
This project has facilitated the attendance of PhD students, post-docs and other participants who applied for travel support to attend the Fifth Solar Coronal Loops workshop that took place in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, from June 29 to July 2, 2011. These workshop series aim to improve our knowledge of the building structures of the Solar atmosphere, coronal loops: how they form, evolve and fade. Understanding the physical mechanism that produces them is fundamental to understand solar variability. Each participant who received support was required to submit an abstract of work relevant to the workshop topic. All participants who received travel support gave oral presentations of their work and participated in the scientific discussions. There were four major scientific sessions: 1.- Coronal Heating 2.- Solar Corona Properties 3.- Integrating Models and Observations 4.- Open Questions in Coronal Loops. A Series of Debates. Invited reviews in each session were given by experts to summarize the state of field and generate discussion. Relevant contributions to each session from the participants followed, included those funded by this project. Therefore, we estimate that this project helped in the training of students, their integration within the community of more experienced researchers and the advancement of knowledge in the field through the contributions of these participants, which were relevant to the topic. Website of the workshop:www.uibcongres.org/congresos/ficha.en.html?cc=205
