These experiments will be carried out at the Centre for Nanostructured Media at Queen’s with input from a network of collaborators across Europe, including Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Institute of Material Sciences Barcelona and Tyndall National Institute.

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Solar flares are explosive releases of energy in the Sun’s atmosphere that can have far-reaching consequences across the solar system. Energy that is stored in the Sun’s magnetic field gets liberated and converted into heating and particle acceleration. Precisely how this conversion takes place remains an open question, but the answer is likely to lie in the chromosphere where much of the energy that is released in the corona (believed to be in the form of relativistic particles) gets deposited. This energy deposition results in the heating, and therefore, expansion, of the ambient plasma in the chromosphere, which manifests itself as increased radiation across much of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The extreme-ultra violet component in particular has a direct influence on the dynamics and composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, and those of other planets. Similar releases of energy on other stars are just as likely to impact potentially habitable exoplanets. The overarching goal of Dr Milligan's fellowship is therefore to use the diagnostic information contained in the radiation emitted during solar flares to understand the underlying energy release and transport processes, and how this leads to enhancements of the Sun’s most geoeffective emission. This in turn can provide insights into similar processes at work across the universe.

X-ray data from missions such as NASA’s RHESSI spacecraft can tell us a lot about the energetic particles believed to be responsible for driving increased emission in the chromosphere, which we can then study using data from SDO, Hinode, GOES, IRIS, as well as the MAVEN satellite in orbit around Mars. These data can be used to guide and constrain numerical simulations, such as RADYN, which can reveal the underlying physics.

Read here about the Daphne Jackson Trust

Read more about Dr Pin's research

He is a developer of symmetry-adapted Gaussian process regression (SA-GPR), which allows the prediction of material and molecular properties that transform as tensors, including dielectric responses (e.g., dipole moments, polarizabilities).

For further information on the Illuminate Fellowship Scheme click here.

Dr Belenchia's research focuses on how to employ to the fullest quantum technologies for fundamental physics investigations. He is interested in the interplay between quantum mechanics, gravity, and thermodynamics and in ways to test their interplay by way of table-top, quantum experiments.