CAREER: Focused Hard X-ray Study of Energy Releases on the Sun and Stellar Objects

这个为期五年的CAREER项目旨在在高能太阳和天体物理学界之间建立一个重要的联系，并提供一个难得的机会，利用同一台高能望远镜（努斯塔）研究太阳和其他恒星上的耀斑。 同时，本科生和研究生将构建和运行一套公民科学项目，旨在利用上一代（间接）硬X射线观测数据调查太阳耀斑中的粒子加速。 公民科学项目的家庭将服务于大学教育的重要目的，并将作为太阳物理学的推广工具，因为我们直接让公众参与高能研究。 因此，教育，推广和研究自然融入项目。 这些初步的公民科学努力将发展和开花，超出本项目的范围，开放公民科学作为一个平台，分析太阳多波长观测提供的丰富数据。 此外，该项目将为明尼苏达大学一个相对较新的太阳物理学研究小组提供重要支持，该小组包括几名职业生涯初期的妇女，直接影响太阳和恒星物理学界未来的性别平衡。 这个CAREER项目的研究和EPO议程支持AGS部门在发现，学习，多样性和跨学科研究方面的战略目标。这个为期五年的CAREER项目的研究计划构成了一种综合方法，用于研究与太阳和其他恒星上的脉冲能量释放（耀斑）相关的粒子加速和日冕加热。 主要目的是调查如何使用新的可用的聚焦硬X射线测量的总能量释放的高能量耀斑的属性规模。 这一目标将通过三项相辅相成的努力来实现。 首先，来自核光谱望远镜阵列（努斯塔）和聚焦光学X射线太阳成像仪（FOXSI）的现有和预期数据集将用于研究太阳上小微耀斑的物理学。 其次，将分析第一组年轻恒星天体（YSO）的聚焦硬X射线观测，以了解巨型耀斑的能量释放。 最后，一个由学生建立的公民科学项目家庭将分析在上一个太阳活动周期中由拉马蒂高能光谱成像仪（RHESSI）观测到的太阳耀斑，以挖掘对耀斑粒子加速的新见解。 预计研究议程将通过阐明次A级微耀斑中小规模能量释放的物理学-这是以前从未在高能量下研究过的一种机制-大大推进耀斑知识。 此外，该项目将利用以前从未获得的YSO耀斑硬X射线观测数据，调查它们是否与太阳耀斑一样，受到能量释放、粒子加速和加热过程的控制，并将确定这些耀斑可能有能力影响发展中的行星系统的方面。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用评估被认为值得支持基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This five-year CAREER project is intended to form an important link between the high-energy solar and astrophysics communities, and offers a rare opportunity to use the same high-energy telescope (NuSTAR) to study flares on the Sun and other stars. In tandem, undergraduate and graduate students will construct and run a set of citizen science projects aimed at the investigation of particle acceleration in solar flares using data from the past generation of (indirect) hard X-ray observations. The family of citizen science projects will serve the important purpose of education at the university level and will additionally serve as a solar physics outreach tool as we directly engage the public in high-energy research. Thus, education, outreach, and research are naturally integrated within the project. It is intended that these initial citizen science efforts will develop and blossom beyond the extent of this project, opening up citizen science as a platform to analyze the wealth of data provided by multi-wavelength observations of the Sun. In addition, this project will provide significant support for a relatively new solar physics research group at the University of Minnesota that includes several early-career women, directly affecting the future gender balance of the solar and stellar physics communities. The research and EPO agenda of this CAREER project supports the Strategic Goals of the AGS Division in discovery, learning, diversity, and interdisciplinary research.The research program of this five-year CAREER project constitutes an integrated approach to studying particle acceleration and coronal heating associated with impulsive energy releases (flares) on the Sun and other stars. The main objective is to investigate how high-energy flare properties scale with total energy released by using newly available focused hard X-ray measurements. This objective will be achieved through three complementary efforts. Firstly, existing and anticipated data sets from the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the Focusing Optics X- ray Solar Imager (FOXSI) will be used to investigate the physics of small microflares on the Sun. Second, the first set of focused hard X-ray observations of young stellar objects (YSOs) will be analyzed to understand energy release in giant flares. Finally, a student-built family of citizen science projects will analyze solar flares observed over the last solar cycle by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) in order to unearth new insight into flare particle acceleration. The research agenda is expected to significantly advance flare knowledge by illuminating the physics of small-scale energy release in sub-A-class microflares -- a regime never before studied at high energies. Furthermore, the project will utilize never-before-available hard X-ray observations of YSO flares to investigate whether they are governed by the same processes of energy release, particle acceleration, and heating as in solar flares, and will ascertain the aspects of those flares that may have the ability to affect developing planetary systems.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.