Solar, Heliospheric & Ionospheric Physics

Solar, Heliospheric & Ionospheric Physics Working Group Introduction

The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) is anticipated to deliver data of unparalleled quality for solar and space weather studies. The Sun serves as a plasma laboratory, capturing plasma in various conditions. Therefore, comprehending solar activity, such as flares and coronal mass ejections, is essential for space weather research. Solar emission can vary significantly across time, frequency, and polarimetric flux density axes, with fluctuations spanning several orders of magnitude. These variations depend on the specific phenomenon, magnetic topologies, and emission mechanism. Hence, the range of scientific applications for solar emissions is broad, necessitating the capture of complexities in the frequency-time and spatial domains. Major areas of solar science include understanding solar flares, coronal mass ejections, the coronal heating problem, and developing coronal magnetography techniques. SKAO will also deliver unprecedented quality data on propagation effects of astronomical radio sources throw the heliosphere and ionosphere. Interplanetary scintillation will provide electron density (Ne) fluctuations and plasma speed, while Faraday rotation will return the magnetic field strength and orientation. For the ionosphere, SKAO is expected to provide unprecedented quality observations to study the propagation and refractive shifts distortion in the image plane, calculation of gradients in Ne along the ray path, and total electron content (TEC).

SKAO's solar observations will provide an unparalleled opportunity to study the solar corona and heliosphere, contributing significantly to various questions of solar science and putting physical constraints.