Spectral Signatures of Synthetic Solar Plage

by Moa Skan (Stockholm University)

Wednesday 1 Apr 2026, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Understanding of how structures in the solar atmosphere are formed, driven, and how their energy dissipates into their surroundings is an important step in order to solve the problem of why the Sun’s atmosphere is heated to high temperatures in its outer layers. Numerical simulations of dynamic structures advected in time are an essential tool for studying how they form and evolve, as they enable access to physical quantities that are unavailable through direct observations. The formation, dynamics, and observable signatures of solar atmospheric structures are primarily governed by radiative transfer, which describes the interaction between photons and matter and determines the observable emission, and magnetohydrodynamics, which governs the dynamics of plasma and how it interacts with its surroundings.

In this work, we have used realistic 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations that model the solar atmosphere from the upper convection zone to the lower corona. The simulated structures and their dynamics are compared with observations using synthetic Hα and/or Si IV 1394 Å and 1403 Å spectral lines, generated using radiative transfer calculations.

In this seminar, I will present the main topic of my PhD thesis: the dynamics of small-scale structures and large-scale regions in the chromosphere and low transition region, and how these affect their observable quantities.