About our team
Solar flare ribbons, chromospheric brightenings during solar flares, have long been recognised as a remote diagnostic of the flare reconnection process, with the surface magnetic field swept out by the ribbons understood to be directly linked to the rate of reconnection in the flare. However, in recent years observations from SDO, IRIS, SST, NVST and others have highlighted that ribbons also have a wealth of fine-scale structures. This fine-scale structure offers a potentially powerful new diagnostic of the flare reconnection process, however to date ribbon fine-structure has not been fully characterised, nor is there an overarching understanding of where it comes from.
This ISSI team brings together an international team of experts to consolidate the present understanding of flare ribbon fine-structure and to identify the likely candidate mechanisms responsible. We aim to address (1) What fine-structure has been identified so far and can these features be consolidated? (2) How well do theoretical models explain these structures, and what are their limitations? (3) What can be learned about coronal reconnection and energy release using ribbon fine-structure? (4) What new observations and modelling strategies are required to advance our understanding of ribbon fine-structure?