TY - JOUR
T1 - A New View of the Solar Interface Region from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)
AU - De Pontieu, Bart
AU - Polito, Vanessa
AU - Hansteen, Viggo
AU - Testa, Paola
AU - Reeves, Katharine K.
AU - Antolin, Patrick
AU - Nóbrega-Siverio, Daniel Elias
AU - Kowalski, Adam F.
AU - Martinez-Sykora, Juan
AU - Carlsson, Mats
AU - McIntosh, Scott W.
AU - Liu, Wei
AU - Daw, Adrian
AU - Kankelborg, Charles C.
N1 - Funding information: The authors would like to thank the IRIS science and operations team, including all science planners, for enabling the IRIS science mission. We are grateful to Ed DeLuca for careful reading of the manuscript. We also would like to thank Tom Ayres, Paul Bryans, Georgios Chintzoglou, Milan Gosic, Chad Madsen, Navdeep Panesar, Ruth Peterson, Alberto Sainz-Dalda, Alan Title, Sanjiv Tiwari, and Magnus Woods for discussing some of the IRIS results reviewed here. We gratefully acknowledge Alberto Sainz Dalda for providing Figure 2a. IRIS is a NASA Small Explorer mission developed and operated by LMSAL with mission operations executed at NASA Ames Research center and major contributions to downlink communications funded by ESA and the Norwegian Space Centre. This work is supported by NASA contract NNG09FA40C (IRIS). The simulations have been run on clusters from the Notur project, and the Pleiades cluster through the computing project s1061, s2053, and s8305 from the High End Computing (HEC) division of NASA. This research was in part supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence scheme, project number 262622, and through grants of computing time from the Programme for Supercomputing. The F-CHROMA project is funded under the EU programme FP7-SPACE-2013-1. The Cheung et al. (2019) self-consistent 3D Radiative MHD simulation of a flaring active region using the MURaM code is supported by NASA’s Heliophysics Grand Challenges Research grant on “Physics and Diagnostics of the Drivers of Solar Eruptions” (NNX14AI14G). P. Antolin acknowledges STFC support through Ernest Rutherford Fellowship grant ST/R004285/2. Numerical computations for Figure 8 were carried out on Cray XC50 at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, NAOJ.
PY - 2021/5/25
Y1 - 2021/5/25
N2 - The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) has been obtaining near- and far-ultraviolet images and spectra of the solar atmosphere since July 2013. IRIS is the highest resolution observatory to provide seamless coverage of spectra and images from the photosphere into the low corona. The unique combination of near- and far-ultraviolet spectra and images at sub-arcsecond resolution and high cadence allows the tracing of mass and energy through the critical interface between the surface and the corona or solar wind. IRIS has enabled research into the fundamental physical processes thought to play a role in the low solar atmosphere such as ion–neutral interactions, magnetic reconnection, the generation, propagation, and dissipation of waves, the acceleration of non-thermal particles, and various small-scale instabilities. IRIS has provided insights into a wide range of phenomena including the discovery of non-thermal particles in coronal nano-flares, the formation and impact of spicules and other jets, resonant absorption and dissipation of Alfvénic waves, energy release and jet-like dynamics associated with braiding of magnetic-field lines, the role of turbulence and the tearing-mode instability in reconnection, the contribution of waves, turbulence, and non-thermal particles in the energy deposition during flares and smaller-scale events such as UV bursts, and the role of flux ropes and various other mechanisms in triggering and driving CMEs. IRIS observations have also been used to elucidate the physical mechanisms driving the solar irradiance that impacts Earth’s upper atmosphere, and the connections between solar and stellar physics. Advances in numerical modeling, inversion codes, and machine-learning techniques have played a key role. With the advent of exciting new instrumentation both on the ground, e.g. the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and space-based, e.g. the Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Orbiter, we aim to review new insights based on IRIS observations or related modeling, and highlight some of the outstanding challenges.
AB - The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) has been obtaining near- and far-ultraviolet images and spectra of the solar atmosphere since July 2013. IRIS is the highest resolution observatory to provide seamless coverage of spectra and images from the photosphere into the low corona. The unique combination of near- and far-ultraviolet spectra and images at sub-arcsecond resolution and high cadence allows the tracing of mass and energy through the critical interface between the surface and the corona or solar wind. IRIS has enabled research into the fundamental physical processes thought to play a role in the low solar atmosphere such as ion–neutral interactions, magnetic reconnection, the generation, propagation, and dissipation of waves, the acceleration of non-thermal particles, and various small-scale instabilities. IRIS has provided insights into a wide range of phenomena including the discovery of non-thermal particles in coronal nano-flares, the formation and impact of spicules and other jets, resonant absorption and dissipation of Alfvénic waves, energy release and jet-like dynamics associated with braiding of magnetic-field lines, the role of turbulence and the tearing-mode instability in reconnection, the contribution of waves, turbulence, and non-thermal particles in the energy deposition during flares and smaller-scale events such as UV bursts, and the role of flux ropes and various other mechanisms in triggering and driving CMEs. IRIS observations have also been used to elucidate the physical mechanisms driving the solar irradiance that impacts Earth’s upper atmosphere, and the connections between solar and stellar physics. Advances in numerical modeling, inversion codes, and machine-learning techniques have played a key role. With the advent of exciting new instrumentation both on the ground, e.g. the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and space-based, e.g. the Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Orbiter, we aim to review new insights based on IRIS observations or related modeling, and highlight some of the outstanding challenges.
KW - Chromosphere, active
KW - Chromosphere, models
KW - Corona, active
KW - Heating, chromospheric
KW - Heating, coronal
KW - Instrumentation and data management
KW - Magnetic fields, chromosphere
KW - Spectrum, ultraviolet
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106907329&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11207-021-01826-0
DO - 10.1007/s11207-021-01826-0
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85106907329
SN - 0038-0938
VL - 296
SP - 1
EP - 91
JO - Solar Physics
JF - Solar Physics
IS - 5
M1 - 84
ER -