Advanced Theory and Methods for Radio Spectral Diagnostics of Solar Flares

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The Principal Investigator (PI) will study thermal and nonthermal radio emission from solar flares through a combination of high resolution radio observations and sophisticated theoretical modeling. The PI's project team intends to develop new analytical methods and software tools for processing imaging radio spectroscopy data, in order to enhance the scientific output of existing radio observatory instruments (which are currently being actively upgraded), as well as the output of future instruments. The PI plans to develop a number of new models to exploit the latest observations and theories, and to create new methods for forward-fitting of radio spectroscopic imaging data and for measuring the diagnostics of high-energy electrons and plasma parameters in solar flaring regions. The PI's forward-fitting inversion methods, when combined with high-resolution imaging spectroscopy data, will enable the solar community to derive the key physical parameters of flares on dynamic time scales with unprecedented spatial resolution. Such investigations will directly address the fundamental questions of magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration processes in solar physics. This activity will include enhance scientific understanding throughout the discipline of astrophysics, since the processes of energy release and charged particle acceleration are common to most astrophysical systems. An increased understanding of the physics of energy release, transformation, and transfer in the solar atmosphere is directly applicable to space weather forecasting. The user-friendly software developed by the project team will be made widely available to the solar and space weather communities through the internet-based "SolarSoft" repository. The team will be actively involved in teaching, training, and learning through the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (CSTR) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The software tools created in this project will be widely used in graduate courses taught at CSTR in solar physics, radio astronomy, and plasma physics.