SHINE: Testing Theories of Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration with Multi-Messenger Data and Four-Dimension (4D) Forward Modeling

Understanding the complexity and evolution of the solar corona is a necessary precursor to being able to predict the Sun’s effects on the Earth’s local space environment. Despite many years of study, the basic physical processes responsible for heating the solar corona and accelerating the solar wind are still not known. This project combines numerical simulations and data analysis to better understand these processes. A graduate student and undergraduate students will be supported and mentored. The goal of the proposed investigation is to substantially narrow down the list of processes that have been suggested for energizing plasma along both closed and open magnetic field lines in the outer solar atmosphere. This work designs a forward-modeling framework that includes as many of the processes as possible, all on equal footing and takes advantage of the available “multi-messenger” data (i.e., both remote-sensing and in situ) to put constraints on the relative contributions of the physical processes responsible for coronal heating and solar wind acceleration. Specifically, the investigation consists of four core tasks: (1) Constructing line-of-sight forward models of EUV and X-ray emission for the low corona, corresponding to as broad a range of proposed heating theories as possible. (2) Implementing six different field-line extrapolation models to compute the coronal magnetic field from photospheric lower boundary conditions. (3) Determining what levels of coronal flux-tube structure can survive to be detectable in interplanetary space, through high-resolution simulations of the formation of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) and turbulent field-line random walk. (4) Self-consistent modeling of coronal heating and solar wind acceleration along open flux tubes using a new generation of an existing code that now includes both wave/turbulence and interchange reconnection physics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.