ABSTRACT FOR COSPAR (SECTION E2.1)
Mapping the 3D Coronal Magnetic Field and Temperature Structure Using Radio Techniques
D. E. Gary (1), G. D. Fleishman (1), G. M. Nita (1), and Z. Wang (1)
(1) New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, USA (dgary@njit.edu)
Solar radio emission is highly dependent on the magnetic field strength and direction in the corona, and
at the same time provides a direct measure of electron temperature/energy. A variety of radiation
mechanisms contribute to the emission, each with their own dependences, and which mechanism
dominates in a particular circumstance is determined by electron energetics, magnetic field strength and
direction, and density. The key to accessing the inherent diagnostic power of radio emission is to have
multi-frequency radio images of sufficient quality, resolution, and polarization purity, with which to
confidently identify and separate the different emission mechanisms, to remove the ambiguities that
have limited many past radio studies. The technical challenge of obtaining high-quality, multi-frequency
images is being addressed for the first time by a number of new radio instruments such as EOVSA, JVLA,
CSRH, USSRT, and FASR, each of which are designed specifically for this purpose. This report emphasizes
one of the more important applications—determining the three-dimensional coronal magnetic field and
temperature structure of solar active regions. We illustrate the talk with new and accurate 3D modeling
of radio emission and radiative transfer, based on the nonlinear force-free field extrapolation of vector
magnetic field measurements, and describe the potent combination of new observations with forward
fitting tools in development.