Exploring Coronal Dynamics: A Next Generation Solar Physics Mission white paper

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a next-generation space-based coronagraph to better understand coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, and improve space weather forecasting through high-resolution, rapid-cadence observations of the solar corona.

Contribution

It proposes a novel imaging-spectrometer coronagraph design with specific capabilities to constrain fluxes and advance solar physics and space weather prediction.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of MHD waves in the corona

Improved constraints on energy, mass, and momentum fluxes

Potential for routine space weather forecasting data

Abstract

Determining the mechanisms responsible for the heating of the coronal plasma and maintaining and accelerating the solar wind are long standing goals in solar physics. There is a clear need to constrain the energy, mass and momentum flux through the solar corona and advance our knowledge of the physical process contributing to these fluxes. Furthermore, the accurate forecasting of Space Weather conditions at the near-Earth environment and, more generally, the plasma conditions of the solar wind throughout the heliosphere, require detailed knowledge of these fluxes in the near-Sun corona. Here we present a short case for a space-based imaging-spectrometer coronagraph, which will have the ability to provide synoptic information on the coronal environment and provide strict constraints on the mass, energy, and momentum flux through the corona. The instrument would ideally achieve cadences of $\sim10$~s, spatial resolution of 1" and observe the corona out to 2~$R_{\sun}$. Such an instrument will enable significant progress in our understanding of MHD waves throughout complex plasmas, as well as potentially providing routine data products to aid Space Weather forecasting.