The Energetic Solar Eruptions: Data and Analysis Tools (SOLER) project will investigate the most energetic phenomena occurring at the Sun and provide new knowledge on their interrelations, variability and energy partitioning. Using the newly expanded unprecedented heliospheric spacecraft fleet, including ESA's Solar Orbiter and NASA's Parker Solar Probe, we will investigate energetic solar eruptions starting from three perspectives: fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs), strong X-ray flares, and large solar energetic particle (SEP) events. Key parameters of the various eruption phenomena will be determined and their interrelations examined to make significant leaps in our understanding on how the eruptive phenomena are linked to each other, how they interact with each other, and how they result in acceleration and release of high energy particles from the solar corona into interplanetary (IP) space. Because of their direct link to particle energisation, large-amplitude coronal waves and shocks related to these events will be in focus as well. Magnetic connections of sources with each other and with the in-situ observers will be determined. In addition to producing significant amounts of new scientific knowledge in the field, SOLER will provide the wider scientific community a wide array of advanced data products, and novel data analysis and visualisation tools that will be openly distributed. This will greatly facilitate future interdisciplinary studies of energetic solar eruptions.
The main scientific objective of SOLER is to provide answers to the following three science questions:
Q1: Connections. What are the magnetic connections between EM radiation sources in the low corona (X-ray) and in the high corona (radio) and how are they connected to the particle radiation observed in situ?
Q2: Relations. What are the relations between the properties of the in-situ SEP observations (energy spectra, time profiles, anisotropies, composition) and the source characteristics (flare X-ray spectra, time profiles, composition; shock parameters) and between the source characteristics themselves?
Q3: Variability. What are the reasons for the large variations in SEP properties and associated flare and CME characteristics (including the presence of non-events in case of strong flares and/or fast CMEs)?
Related to these scientific questions, SOLER has three technical objectives as follows:
T1: Catalogues. SOLER will deliver three interlinked catalogues of energetic solar phenomena consisting of strong flares, fast CMEs and large SEP events.
T2: Analysis tools. SOLER will deliver new tools for analysing and visualising solar eruption datasets and modelling results in an integrated manner and distribute them openly to the scientific community.
T3: Data. SOLER will produce several high-level multi-instrument datasets and distribute them openly to the scientific community.
To achieve these objectives, the work is divided in seven scientific and technical work packages addressing the development of analysis methodologies (WP2-WP6), scientific data analysis (WP7) and distribution of data and tools (WP8).