SHINE: Structures in the Solar Corona and Solar Wind and Their Interaction With Turbulence

About This Grant

The solar wind carries particles and magnetic fields throughout the heliosphere and towards the Earth. It is important to understand structures and turbulence in the solar corona, which produces the solar wind, in order to predict and understand space weather. This project addresses the Solar, Heliospheric, and Interplanetary Environment (SHINE) goal of understanding the solar wind, through research that combines remote-sensing observations, in-situ satellite observations, and numerical simulations. The project supports an early-career researcher and broadens the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM and includes public outreach to K-12 students. Understanding the inner heliosphere, especially the Sun-Earth interaction system, requires analysis of the sources of the solar wind in the solar corona, emergent large-scale solar wind structures like corotating interaction regions (CIRs) and the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), and the small-scale solar wind fluctuations or turbulence including the structure called magnetic switchbacks (SBs), treated as an integrated system. The science focus of this project is to study the interaction between large and meso-scale structures and turbulence in the solar wind and understand the solar coronal origins of the structures and turbulence. To this aim, the research will combine numerical simulations with long-term multi-satellite observations and remote-sensing observations to address the following two questions: 1. How do the properties of the corona such as the distribution of coronal holes, streamers, and pseudostreamers lead to different properties of the solar wind observed in-situ? 2. How do solar wind structures like HCS, CIRs, and SBs modify the turbulence properties, such as the power spectrum, Alfvenicity, energy transfer rate etc., during their radial propagation? The 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations combined with analysis of conjugated in-situ satellite data collected at different locations in the heliosphere will shed light on the physical mechanisms that determine how the turbulence properties are modified by the solar wind structures. The work utilizes a large volume of remote-sensing data to understand how the magnetic and plasma structures on the Sun determines the properties of the structures and turbulence in the solar wind. 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.