Multi-Scale Magnetic Reconnection Using Solar Plasma

An FWF ESPRIT project at the University of Vienna

About

More than 99% of ordinary matter in the observable universe is magnetised plasma. Within it, magnetic reconnection rapidly releases stored magnetic energy and shapes how particles and energy behave, from solar flares and Earth’s magnetosphere to fusion reactors and black holes. Reconnection links processes across many orders of magnitude in scale, which is what makes it so hard to model and observe.

This project uses new observational and computational capabilities in solar physics to determine how large-scale plasma dynamics drive magnetic reconnection. The Sun is the best natural laboratory for this: solar flares are the most energetic events in the solar system, and the reconnection behind them is also what drives space weather.

Scientific questions

1. What sets the rate of reconnection in realistic three-dimensional, plasmoid-filled solar plasma, and how do turbulence, plasmoid merging and magnetic topology change it?
2. How does the three-dimensional structure of a reconnection region evolve during explosive energy release?
3. How is the released magnetic energy divided between heating, bulk flows, turbulence and particle acceleration?
4. What observable precursors precede reconnection, and what determines the transition from slow to fast reconnection?

Approach

The project combines two strands. The first is three-dimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a flaring solar atmosphere with MURaM, coupled to forward modelling with ECLIPSE, an open-source code that turns simulations into realistic synthetic spectroscopic observations. The second is analysis of real extreme-ultraviolet spectroscopic observations, tested directly against those synthetic observations.

The work is timed around two next-generation solar missions, the Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE, expected launch mid-2027) and SOLAR-C with its EUV High-throughput Spectroscopic Telescope (EUVST, expected launch mid-2028), alongside existing instruments such as Hinode/EIS and IRIS. The project runs for three years and includes two reconnection science workshops in Vienna.

Project details

Principal investigator

James McKevitt (ORCID)

Host institution

University of Vienna

Funding

€349,732 from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) ESPRIT programme

Grant DOI

10.55776/ESP4615526

Keywords

Magnetic reconnection; solar atmosphere; plasma physics; magnetohydrodynamics; forward modelling; EUV spectroscopy

Mentors

Manuel Güdel (University of Vienna, primary); Astrid Veronig (University of Graz, secondary)

International collaborators

• Sarah Matthews, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London (UK)
• Shin Imada, University of Tokyo (Japan)
• Louise Harra, PMOD/WRC and ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
• Shin Toriumi, ISAS/JAXA (Japan)

Contact

See James McKevitt’s personal website for contact details and publications.

This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/ESP4615526].