Speaker: Melissa Pesce-Rollins (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare | Pisa, Italy)

Title: The flaring gamma-ray Sun: 17 years of observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Abstract: The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations of the active Sun provide the largest sample of detected solar flares with emission greater than 30 MeV to date. These include detections of impulsive and hours-long sustained emission as well as greater than 100 MeV emission from flares whose active regions where located behind the visible limb. Identifying the mechanism responsible for accelerating electrons/ions and the site at which it occurs is one of the outstanding questions in solar physics. Many advances have been made over the past decade thanks to new observational data and refined simulations that together help to shed light on this topic. In this seminar I will provide a brief overview of the most salient results from the first 17 years of Fermi-LAT in orbit and how this observational channel combined with observations from across the electromagnetic spectrum can provide a unique opportunity to diagnose the mechanisms of high-energy emission and particle acceleration in solar flares.

Note: Host: Jake Mitchell

• Date:
  Feb. 5, 2026, 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
  
  
• Location:

  AIP; Kirch building, Conference room

  
  
• Contact:
  Julián Alvarado-Gómez
  julian.alvarado-gomez@aip.de