1. 3 rd RSIH&SWA Workshop – Morelia, Mexico – 21 October 2015 Radio Heliophysics with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) M.M. Bisi (Mario.Bisi@stfc.ac.uk) (1), R.A. Fallows (2), D. Oberoi (3), E. Kontar (4), D. Maia (5), and the SKA Solar, Heliospheric, & Ionospheric (SHI) Science Working Group (SWG). (1) RAL Space, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Oxford, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, England, UK (2) ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Postbus 2, 7990 AA Dwingeloo, The Netherlands (3) NCRA-TIFR, India (4) Glasgow, Scotland, UK (5) FCUP, Portugal

2. Outline  What is the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)?  Heliophysics Opportunities with the SKA  Solar, Heliospheric, and Ionospheric (SHI) Science Working Group (SWG)  SKA Books Advertisement  Summary

4. What is the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)?  All information and images are taken from the SKA WebPages (https://www.skatelescope.org/) and SKA presentations.

5. The SKA (1)  The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the largest radio telescope ever built providing more collecting area and sensitivity than ever before.  The system will be built in two stages: SKA1 and SKA2 (the latter will be the full system and subject to the success of SKA1).  The SKA will be split into multiple components (LOW, MID, dishes, dipoles, aperture arrays, etc…) as well as being split across two continents (Africa and Oceania) in two countries: South Africa and Australia; as well as having its Head Office in the UK in Europe.  Several Precursor (e.g. LOFAR) and Pathfinder (e.g. MeerKAT and ASKAP) radio telescopes have formed initial testbeds for the final SKA designs and concepts.

6. The SKA (2)  SKA1-MID, Karoo, South Africa: 133 SKA1 15m dishes and 64 13.5m MeerKAT dishes; maximum baseline ~150km (a fall back of 120km as an option).  SKA1-MID Bands: 2 (0.95–1.76 GHz), 5 (4.6–14(24) GHz), and 1 (0.35–1.1 GHz).  SKA1-LOW, Murchison, Australia: 130,000 dipoles (512 stations x 256 antennas); 50–350 MHz frequency range.  Final SKA2 numbers will be much higher but have not fully been finalised and will be science and cost driven.  SKA1-LOA will have ~65km (or up to ~80km) maximum baselines and a large areal concentration in core.  SKA-LOW will have up to 500 tied-array beams and SKA-MID up to 1,500 tied-array beams.

7. The SKA (3)

8. The SKA (4)  All information and images are taken from the SKA WebPages (https://www.skatelescope.org/) and SKA presentations.

9. The SKA (5)  Comparisons in (clockwise from above) sensitivity, survey speed, and resolution of the SKA1 and SKA2 with various other radio-telescope systems.

10. SKA Member Countries/Organisations  Australia: Department of Industry and Science  Canada: National Research Council  China: Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China  India: National Centre for Radio Astrophysics  Italy: National Institute for Astrophysics  New Zealand: Ministry of Economic Development  South Africa: National Research Foundation  Sweden: Onsala Space Observatory  The Netherlands: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research  United Kingdom: Science and Technology Facilities Council  Non-member countries with an interest: Brazil, France, Japan, Malta, South Korea, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, and USA.

11. Heliophysics Opportunities with the SKA

12. SKA Heliophysics (1)  The solar spectrum (highlighting both active- and quiet-Sun components from ~1Hz to ~1THz).

13. SKA Heliophysics (2)  Solar and coronal science targets include the quiet Sun, quasi- periodic oscillations (QPOs), active region (AR) dynamics, particle acceleration, shocks, coronal heating, and radio bursts.  Heliospheric science would include both interplanetary scintillation (IPS) and heliospheric Faraday rotation (FR) with the aims of specifying to the highest accuracy the velocity, density proxy, and three-component magnetic fields for detailed scientific solar-wind and coronal mass ejection (CME) studies.  Ionospheric science would be far reaching to aid other users in accounting for the ionosphere and variations in signals (scintillation and FR) due to a varying ionosphere, as well as investigations into the nature of the ionosphere itself and its precise form (such as “tubes” recently discovered in MWA data producing varying gradient fields – Loi et al., GRL, 2015).

14. Solar, Heliospheric, and Ionospheric (SHI) Science Working Group (SWG)

15. SKA SHI SWG  Formally established in May 2015.  ~60 members from 22 countries across all six (traditional) fully-inhabited continents.  Scientific interests by % are solar and coronal (including radio bursts, CME initiations, etc…) 83%, heliospheric 10%, and ionospheric 6%.  In terms of data requirements, solar are ~0% commensal whereas both ionospheric and heliospheric are ~100% commensal (meaning that there are other groups interested in the same data/observing modes as those interested in conducting heliospheric and ionospheric science.  A caveat however for commensality is that we may still want to operate on a trigger for certain studies – but this may lie in the PI-led science and not in the KSP(s) science.

16. SKA Books Advertisement

17.  A new two-volume book containing 135 chapters, 2,000 pages of SKA science, with 1,200 contributors to the book (see: https://www.skatelescope.org/books/). This includes just one solar-heliosphere chapter and several planetary-related chapters.

18. Summary

19.  Working towards one or more Key Science Projects (KSP) – but these are not your typical KSPs in the way in which they are to be structured.  Heliophysics (including space weather science) separated out into the three main components of solar, heliospheric, and ionospheric science.  If you want to get on the mailing list or get more-actively involved, then contact one of the current (2015-2017) SKA SHI SWG Chairs (Divya Oberoi or Eduard Kontar) and see: http://astronomers.skatelescope.org/science-working-groups/shi/ for the current list of interested parties. Summary