Main Objective: In order to reach a new level of understanding of both large and small-scale solar phenomena, it is important to make increasingly realistic models that will allow a greater synergy between observations and models. The main objective of the proposed IHOP is to obtain Hinode SP & EIS and IRIS co-observations of coronal bright points that will be used for a fundamentally new approach in modelling solar phenomena called observation- (or data-) driven modelling, in which the required gboundaryh conditions for realistic numerical models are directly obtained from observations.
Scientific Justification: For a theoretical model to accurately represent the physical evolution of the solar atmosphere, the model must, minimally, be consistent with observations of the modelled system. Accordingly, a starting point for modeling such systems is to directly incorporate information obtained from solar observations, both to determine the modelfs initial state and to evolve the model forward in time over a given period. Progress has already been made on (i) extracting static magnetic field models for initial conditions - from potential-field to Non-Linear, Force-Free Field models - from observations, and (ii) deriving time-dependent boundary velocity and/or electric field components at the photosphere to evolve dynamic models forward in time. Employing such information, combined from various solar observations, in Magneto-Hydro-Dynamic (MHD) models will, however, require further exploration and development before such models are capable of producing results that can compare directly with corresponding observations. In this project, we attack open problems in the process of running such gobservation-drivenh simulations.
In particular, we shall investigate the development of small-scale magnetic structures, such as Coronal Bright Points. Our goal is to go from observations, through MHD modeling, to forward modelling, with the aim of eventually providing synthetic observations that can be directly compared with the original observations.
We have created a team of researchers that will combine their expertise to solve a number of critical issues as a necessary step to lay the groundwork for this fundamentally new approach in solar physics research. The first step of this research project is to acquire suitable solar observations that include high-resolution, high-cadence vector magnetic field observations coupled with imaging and spectral information of Coronal Bright Points. Although the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager onboard the Solar Dynamic Observatory provides full disk vector magnetograms, the transverse component strength in quiet solar regions is not sufficient for the purpose of our study and we, therefore, require observations from the Spectropolarimeter (SP) on board Hinode combined with EIS and IRIS spectral co-observations. We have searched the whole SP archive for suitable data (please see below the SP/EIS/IRIS data requirements), but unfortunately we have not found any suitable dataset. The vector magnetic field data are crucial for deriving the time-dependent boundary velocity and/or electric field components at the photosphere to evolve dynamic models forward in time, while the spectral IRIS and EIS data are essential for the forward modelling. |
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