Field line helicity and solar eruptivity
The research project ‘fiEld Line helIcity and Solar eruptivITY’ (ELISITY) will examine the reasons behind the eruptive behaviour of the Sun, and the possibility of forecasting it. The importance of the project stems from the relation of solar eruptivity to Space Weather, and the international effort put in predicting the latter. ELISITY will study the behaviour of the minimally-explored physical quantity field line helicity (FLH) during the production and early stages of solar eruptions. FLH is a proxy for the density of helicity that offers new and important capabilities in the study of solar eruptivity, since it contains the same information with magnetic helicity, the conserved in ideal magneto-hydrodynamics quantity that describes the complexity of a magnetic field, and in addition, it provides information for the locations where helicity is more important. ELISITY will also determine parameters related to the spatial distribution of FLH that indicate eruptivity, and conditions on these parameters for solar eruptions to occur. For these, ELISITY will select observational cases which exhibit different levels of activity and morphology, using existing data from solar missions. The project will accurately compute FLH based on the researcher’s recent developments on the topic. The host institute will provide all required infrastructure and services to assist the researcher, and the supervision by very experienced staff. The project will have a positive impact to all parts involved: the researcher will gain new research skills in using solar observations, and also teaching experience, while the research team of the host will gain on state-of-the-art helicity and FLH computation methods. The potentially ground breaking project results will be disseminated with the publication of scientific articles to peer-reviewed journals, and their presentation to scientific conferences; they will also be communicated to the general public with outreach activities.