Research

Space Weather with the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter

The Sun is an active star that can launch solar storms into interplanetary space. If these storms interact with the Earth, they can cause auroral displays, damage satellites and interrupt power and communications systems.

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is a €150M radio telescope that is providing new insights into the physics of solar storms. We propose to use LOFAR together with NASA’s recently launched Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft to study solar storms and various phenomena associated with them. There is also the potential to use in-situ observations from ESA’s Solar Orbiter (SO) spacecraft, which is scheduled for launch in February 2020. The combination of in-situ spacecraft measurements and ground-based remote-sensing observations will give us a unique insight into the fundamental properties of coronal and heliospheric plasma parameters for the first time.

During solar storms, the solar atmosphere is heated, plasma motion, waves and shocks are ignited, and particles are accelerated. The accelerated particles propagate through the solar corona causing a variety of plasma instabilities that lead to enhanced non-thermal radio emission, known as “radio bursts”.

By studying radio-bursts’ characteristics we can gain insight into the properties of energetic particles and the ambient coronal plasma, and the properties of particle acceleration mechanisms, such as magnetic reconnection and/or shocks in the solar atmosphere. LOFAR can be used to study the fundamental plasma physics of solar radio bursts with unprecedented time resolution in dynamic spectra, as well as with both interferometric imaging and tied array imaging.

Combining LOFAR observations with in-situ measurements from PSP, represents an unprecedented opportunity to study particle acceleration and the associated plasma processes from the low corona into interplanetary space.