Speaker
Description
First Name: Lakshmi Pradeep
Last Name: Chitta
Email Address: chitta@mps.mpg.de
Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
All Authors: Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta
Abstract: The outer solar atmosphere, the million-Kelvin degree hot corona, is intricately governed by the magnetic field. The diverse magnetic landscape in the solar surface results in an equally diverse and complex coronal features. Magnetic structures in the corona range from ~100 km sized tiny brightenings with lifetimes of at most a few seconds to regions on scales of tens of megameters with minimal temporal variations. Understanding the origin and dynamics of this coronal magnetic field is a central theme of the Solar Orbiter mission. The Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, two of the remote-sensing instruments on board Solar Orbiter, capture surface magnetic structures and coronal features at almost exactly the same high spatial resolution of 200 km. These unprecedented observations are providing new insights into the photosphere-corona connection and are refining our understanding of fundamental processes in the magnetized plasma including reconnection and magnetohydrodynamic waves. I will review the recent progress on coronal structure and dynamics with an emphasis on the open questions and possible future directions.