Recent advances in solar radio instrumentation toward broad frequency coverage with high spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution are revolutionizing our understanding of the basic physics of the solar corona, magnetic energy release, and particle acceleration. At the same time, events on the Sun and in interplanetary space revealed by radio observations provide some of the best-available remote sensing of Space Weather effects that impact the heliosphere and Earth's space environment.
The field of Solar and Space Weather Radio Physics was surveyed in 2004 when the aforementioned instrumentation was only dreamed of. Now that actual instruments exist in the form of non-solar-dedicated instruments such as the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), Mileura Wide-Field Array (MWA), and new solar-dedicated instruments such as the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA), Siberian Radio Heliograph (SRH), and Mingantu Ultrawide Spectral Radioheliograph (MUSER), the time is right for an update to the field that brings together in one place both new results from observations with the above instruments, and the associated multi-wavelength modeling efforts that put the radio observations in context with other data and theories.
This Research Topic seeks papers that emphasize the new measurements of coronal magnetic field and particle acceleration made possible by the new data, and the associated physical interpretations in terms of magnetic reconnection, electron beams, shock waves, and turbulence. In addition, we seek papers to address the true potential of radio observations across the radio spectrum by examining the limits of what is possible with a future instrument such as the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope (FASR), which would couple a panoramic frequency coverage with extremely high image quality, resulting in high-precision, spatially-resolved, dual-polarization brightness temperature spectra.
Recent advances in solar radio instrumentation toward broad frequency coverage with high spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution are revolutionizing our understanding of the basic physics of the solar corona, magnetic energy release, and particle acceleration. At the same time, events on the Sun and in interplanetary space revealed by radio observations provide some of the best-available remote sensing of Space Weather effects that impact the heliosphere and Earth's space environment.
The field of Solar and Space Weather Radio Physics was surveyed in 2004 when the aforementioned instrumentation was only dreamed of. Now that actual instruments exist in the form of non-solar-dedicated instruments such as the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), Mileura Wide-Field Array (MWA), and new solar-dedicated instruments such as the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA), Siberian Radio Heliograph (SRH), and Mingantu Ultrawide Spectral Radioheliograph (MUSER), the time is right for an update to the field that brings together in one place both new results from observations with the above instruments, and the associated multi-wavelength modeling efforts that put the radio observations in context with other data and theories.
This Research Topic seeks papers that emphasize the new measurements of coronal magnetic field and particle acceleration made possible by the new data, and the associated physical interpretations in terms of magnetic reconnection, electron beams, shock waves, and turbulence. In addition, we seek papers to address the true potential of radio observations across the radio spectrum by examining the limits of what is possible with a future instrument such as the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope (FASR), which would couple a panoramic frequency coverage with extremely high image quality, resulting in high-precision, spatially-resolved, dual-polarization brightness temperature spectra.
