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Discoveries of exo-auroral radio emission in the last two decades have led to an ongoing paradigm shift––many highly circularly polarized intense radio bursts detected in a variety of low-mass stars are likely signatures of auroral activities rather than flare-driven magnetic activities. Such discoveries have opened a new window in probing the magnetic field in stellar/substellar/exoplanetary systems. One of the outstanding challenges in discerning the two scenarios is characterizing the aurora-generating magnetic topologies of the stellar/substellar objects despite their large distances. Thanks to its proximity, the Sun provides much of the detailed context to study radio bursts similar to those in the stellar/substellar regime. A recent imaging spectroscopy observation with the Jansky VLA reveals a new type of radio bursts near a sunspot, which resembles exo-auroral radio emission in the literature both temporally and spectrally. Unlike the planetary aurora scenario, the detected radio signature is identified as electron cyclotron maser (ECM) emission from a sunspot driven by energetic electrons accelerated in flare activities. Comprehensive observations of sunspot auroral radio emissions will not only advance our understanding of the fundamental physical processes of ECM emissions on the Sun but also impose broad implications on stellar/substellar physics and exo-space weather sciences. These efforts will require long-term monitoring by a solar-dedicated, broad bandwidth radio telescope capable of imaging the Sun in dual circular polarization with a high image dynamic range and subsecond time resolution, which is still lacking. In this talk, after a brief introduction to ECM emissions from stars and the Sun, I will discuss the technical requirements in order to make a leap forward in observations of aurora-type ECM emissions from the Sun, and the expected science returns from a superior broadband radio imaging spectropolarimetry capabilities of a next-generation radio heliograph, such as the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope (FASR) concept.

We present observational constraints on the solar chromospheric heating contribution from acoustic waves with frequencies between 5 and 50 mHz. We utilize observations from the Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico complemented with observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array collected on 2017 April 23. The properties of the power spectra of the various quantities are derived from the spectral lines of Ca II 854.2 nm, H I 656.3 nm, and the millimeter continuum at 1.25 mm and 3 mm. At the observed frequencies the diagnostics almost all show a power law behavior, whose particulars (slope, peak and white noise floors) are correlated with the type of solar feature (internetwork, network, plage). In order to disentangle the vertical versus transverse plasma motions we examine two different fields of view; one near disk center and the other close to the limb. To infer the acoustic flux in the middle chromosphere, we compare our observations with synthetic observables from the time-dependent radiative hydrodynamic RADYN code. Our findings show that acoustic waves carry up to about 1 kW m$^{-2}$ of energy flux in the middle chromosphere, which is not enough to maintain the quiet chromosphere, contrary to previous publications., Accepted for publication in ApJ

The authors of this report met on 28-30 March 2018 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, for a 3-day workshop that brought together a group of data providers, expert modelers, and computer and data scientists, in the solar discipline. Their objective was to identify challenges in the path towards building an effective framework to achieve transformative advances in the understanding and forecasting of the Sun-Earth system from the upper convection zone of the Sun to the Earth's magnetosphere. The workshop aimed to develop a research roadmap that targets the scientific challenge of coupling observations and modeling with emerging data-science research to extract knowledge from the large volumes of data (observed and simulated) while stimulating computer science with new research applications. The desire among the attendees was to promote future trans-disciplinary collaborations and identify areas of convergence across disciplines. The workshop combined a set of plenary sessions featuring invited introductory talks and workshop progress reports, interleaved with a set of breakout sessions focused on specific topics of interest. Each breakout group generated short documents, listing the challenges identified during their discussions in addition to possible ways of attacking them collectively. These documents were combined into this report-wherein a list of prioritized activities have been collated, shared and endorsed., Comment: Workshop Report