Quantifying Energy Release in Solar Flares and Solar Eruptive Events: New Frontiers with a Next-Generation Solar Radio Facility

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a next-generation solar radio facility with advanced imaging capabilities to significantly enhance understanding of magnetic energy release in solar flares and eruptions.

Contribution

It proposes a new large-scale radio array with 100-200 antennas to enable high-fidelity, high-resolution broadband imaging spectropolarimetry of solar flares.

Findings

Current instruments limited by dynamic range and resolution.

Next-generation array can achieve sub-second time resolution and arcsecond angular resolution.

Enhanced observations will facilitate breakthroughs in understanding solar flare energy release.

Abstract

Solar flares and the often associated solar eruptive events serve as an outstanding laboratory to study the magnetic reconnection and the associated energy release and conversion processes under plasma conditions difficult to reproduce in the laboratory, and with considerable spatiotemporal details not possible elsewhere in the universe. In the past decade, thanks to advances in multi-wavelength imaging spectroscopy, as well as developments in theories and numerical modeling, significant progress has been made in improving our understanding of solar flare/eruption energy release. In particular, broadband imaging spectroscopy at microwave wavelengths offered by the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA) has enabled the revolutionary capability of measuring the time-evolving coronal magnetic fields at or near the flare reconnection region. However, owing to EOVSA's limited dynamic range, imaging fidelity, and angular resolution, such measurements can only be done in a region around the brightest source(s) where the signal-to-noise is sufficiently large. In this white paper, after a brief introduction to the outstanding questions and challenges pertinent to magnetic energy release in solar flares and eruptions, we will demonstrate how a next-generation radio facility with many (~100-200) antenna elements can bring the next revolution by enabling high dynamic range, high fidelity broadband imaging spectropolarimetry along with a sub-second time resolution and arcsecond-level angular resolution. We recommend to prioritize the implementation of such a ground-based instrument within this decade. We also call for facilitating multi-wavelength, multi-messenger observations and advanced numerical modeling in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the "system science" of solar flares and eruptions.