The Future of Solar modelling: requirements for a new generation of solar models

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current state of solar modelling, emphasizing the importance of high-quality observations and fundamental physics, and discusses future research directions to improve model accuracy and understanding.

Contribution

It highlights key uncertainties in solar models and proposes multidisciplinary strategies to address them for advancing solar and stellar physics.

Findings

High-quality helioseismic data has advanced solar modelling.

Uncertainties in physics inputs limit model predictions.

Multidisciplinary approaches are essential for future improvements.

Abstract

Helioseismology and solar modelling have enjoyed a golden era thanks to decades-long surveys from ground-based networks such as for example GONG, BiSON, IRIS and the SOHO and SDO space missions which have provided high-quality helioseismic observations that supplemented photometric, gravitational, size and shape, limb-darkening and spectroscopic constraints as well as measurements of neutrino fluxes. However, the success of solar models is also deeply rooted in progress in fundamental physics (equation of state of the solar plasma, high-quality atomic physics computations and opacities, description of convection and the role of macroscopic transport processes of angular momentum and chemicals, such as for example meridional circulation, internal gravity waves, shear-induced turbulence or even convection. In this paper, we briefly outline some key areas of research that deserve particular attention in solar modelling. We discuss the current uncertainties that need to be addressed, how these limit our predictions from solar models and their impact on stellar evolution in general. We outline potential strategies to mitigate them and how multidisciplinary approaches will be needed in the future to tackle them.