New View of the Solar Chromosphere

The solar chromosphere forms a crucial, yet complex and until recently poorly understood, interface between the solar photosphere and the heliosphere. Advances in high-resolution instrumentation, adaptive optics, image reconstruction techniques, and space-based observatories allow unprecedented high-resolution views of the finely structured and highly dynamic chromosphere. Dramatic progress in numerical computations allows 3D radiative magnetohydrodynamic forward models to take the place of the previous generation of 1D semiempirical atmosphere models. These new models provide deep insight into complex nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium chromospheric diagnostics and enable physics-based interpretations of observations. This combination of modeling and observations has led to new insights into the role of shock waves, transverse magnetic waves, magnetic reconnection and flux emergence in the chromospheric energy balance, the formation of spicules, the impact of ion-neutral interactions, and the connectivity between chromosphere and transition region. During the next few years, the advent of new instrumentation (integral-field-unit spectropolarimetry) and observatories (ALMA, DKIST), coupled with novel inversion codes and expansion of existing numerical models to deal with ever more complex physical processes (including multifluid approaches), is expected to lead to major new insights into the dominant heating processes in the chromosphere and beyond.