Solar Orbiter, a joint ESA/NASA mission, is to study the Sun and inner heliosphere in greater detail than ever before. Launched in February 2000, Solar Orbiter already completed its first orbit in reaching perihelion of 0.5 au from the Sun in June 2000.
Understanding the physical processes operating in Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events is a major goal of the Solar Orbiter mission because...
Solar flare and magnetotail observations show simultaneous acceleration of ions and electrons into power-law energy distributions extending to high energy. This suggests a common reconnection acceleration process but the underlying physics is not well understood. During magnetic reconnection, energetic particles undergo a universal Fermi acceleration process involving the curvature drift of...
We create combined data-based models of magnetic reconnection, and particle acceleration and transport in actual solar flares. This is done by combining 3D MHD simulations initialised using non-linear force-free reconstruction of the coronal magnetic field, with relativistic guiding-centre test-particle simulations of particle acceleration and transport. Using the obtained trajectories for a...
We analyze the coronal elemental abundances during a small flare using Hinode/EIS observations. Compared to the preflare elemental abundances, we observed a strong increase in coronal abundance of Ca xiv 193.84 Å, an emission line with low first ionization potential (FIP < 10 eV), as quantified by the ratio Ca/Ar during the flare. This is in contrast to the unchanged abundance ratio observed...
We have developed new common analysis tools to study archival solar-flare gamma-ray data from three satellite spectrometers. These tools are based on a revised set of spectral templates incorporating the latest nuclear line cross sections that are used to fit flare spectra in combination with electron-produced continua. We have applied these toolsto study emission from 19 SMM, 1 RHESSI, and 1...
