Collaborative Research: SHINE: Where Are Particles Accelerated in Coronal Jets?

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Key questions remain regarding the source regions of impulsive solar energetic particles and their escape into the heliosphere. Understanding their origin will help in forecasting space weather and its impacts on spacecraft and instruments. This project addresses the Solar, Heliospheric, and Interplanetary Environment (SHINE) goal to enhance understanding of processes by which energy in the form of magnetic fields and particles are produced by the Sun and accelerated in interplanetary space. Graduate and undergraduate researchers will be supported. Further, a database of solar coronal-jet events will be created.The project is an observational and theoretical study of coronal jets to answer two science questions: (1) Where are electrons accelerated in active-region periphery jets? (2) How do flare-accelerated particles from active-region periphery jets escape into the heliosphere? The approach combines high-quality observations with state-of-the-art numerical simulations. The team will select and analyze a set of coronal jets at active-region peripheries from space-based and ground-based observatories, including the NSF-funded Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array. They will determine which types of jets are associated with impulsive solar energetic particle events, where the high-energy electrons are located both within and beyond the solar sources, and how these events evolve. Their magnetic topologies will be estimated by nonlinear force-free field extrapolations from magnetograms. Based on the data analysis results, they will perform simulations with initial conditions consistent with typical properties of the observed events. Postprocessing the simulation output with the particle-tracking code will reveal where electrons are energized, how their spectra evolve, and how these energetic particle escape.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.