Instructors: Dr. Steven R. Cranmer   (email, web page)
Duane Physics D111 (main campus), LASP/SPSC N218 (east campus)
Dr. Thomas E. Berger   (email)
Smead Aerospace Building N433 (east campus)
Course Times:     Spring 2022, Thursdays, 4:00-4:50 pm (Mountain)
Location: Duane Physics room E126, and on Zoom
Office Hours: Mondays and Fridays, 1:10-2:10 pm (both Zoom & D111)
Syllabus: See the most up-to-date PDF version.

Summary

This hybrid course is the ninth offering of the George Ellery Hale Collaborative Graduate Education (COLLAGE) program, a joint effort between CU Boulder, the National Solar Observatory (NSO), and 6 other universities. We anticipate that graduate students from outside CU Boulder will take this course by registering for courses at their home institutions that are used for special topics, seminar-type discussions, or independent study. At CU, this course is a one-credit seminar graduate elective. The CU class will meet in person, but we will also hold synchronous Zoom sessions to join together everyone at all of the participating institutions (with additional instructors lined up to facilitate local discussions).

In this course, we will cover the physics of the solar corona, including a survey of proposed solutions to the coronal heating problem, the extension of the Sun's magnetic field into the heliosphere, the acceleration and evolution of the solar wind and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), an introduction to the impacts of "space weather" on human life and society, and a summary of space weather forecasting.

Course Goals

The overall goal of COLLAGE is to broaden the scope of graduate-level curricula beyond what is routinely available at any one institution, to include a series of focused-topic courses for students considering research in solar/space/heliospheric physics. By increasing exposure to cutting-edge science, we hope these courses will spark interest in doing research in these fields. We also want to help students build practical research skills, like coding (for which we will tend to use Jupyter notebooks in python), plotting one's results to optimize scientific communication, and how to get the most out of reading papers.

For details about grading, assignments, and reading materials, see the syllabus.

Other Resources

Schedule

Below is a detailed schedule that will list the material covered in each class session, links to electronic copies of any handouts, and various course deadlines.

  1. Thurs., January 13: Course overview: survey of data, jargon, and unanswered questions

  2. Thurs., January 20: Coronal heating: origins and scaling laws

  3. Thurs., January 27: Coronal heating: discussion and hands-on exercises

  4. Thurs., February 3: Coronal heating: physics of wave/turbulence concepts

  5. Thurs., February 10: Coronal heating: physics of reconnection/nanoflare concepts

  6. Thurs., February 17: Magnetic field extrapolation and Parker's (1958) solar wind

  7. Thurs., February 24: Solar wind: advanced physics; hands-on exercises

  8. Thurs., March 3: Solar wind: evolution, corotating streams, and the outer heliosphere

  9. Thurs., March 10: Coronal mass ejections (CMEs): acceleration, heating, and evolution

  10. Thurs., March 17: Space weather: the interplanetary space environment

      [March 21-25: Spring Break; no classes.]

  11. Thurs., March 31: Space weather: terrestrial responses and technological impacts

  12. Thurs., April 7: Space weather: case studies of historical extreme events

  13. Thurs., April 14: Space weather: "research to operations" and forecasting

  14. Thurs., April 21: The solar/stellar connection: scalings and exoplanet impacts

  15. Thurs., April 28: Course summary and round-table discussion: what did we learn?