The appointee is expected to significantly contribute to our current acknowledge of the magnetism of the Sun. The main goal is to exploit the scientific observations that SO/PHI will carry out during its nominal mission phase in combination with the other Solar Orbiter (SO) remote-sensing instruments. Particular interest will be put into investigating the impact that solar photospheric magnetic field activity has in the uppermost atmospheric layer, the solar corona. SO/PHI will provide high sensitivity, full spectropolarimetric measurements with its two telescopes each achieving at perihelion (0.3 AU) 2 and 0.3 arcsec spatial resolution. Such measurements will help us to study in detail the magnetic interactions occurring at the solar surface and from a point of view different from the one we have from Earth. To achieve the science goals, data coming from the SO Metis and EUI instruments will be used. Metis images the visible and ultraviolet emission of the Sun's corona. Its observations will help diagnosing the effects of solar photospheric magnetic fields interactions in the solar corona through polarization and solar wind speed measurements. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) is also part of the remote sensing instrument package of SO and will explore the inner heliosphere. In particular, it provides information about the solar activity from the chromosphere up to the corona. Observations will be combined with those that can be taken from the Earth point of view, e.g., the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) of the NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Spectropolarimeter (SP) onboard the JAXA’s Hinode satellite, or from solar telescopes on the ground. This study is of paramount importance for both improving our current knowledge of solar magnetism and for successfully exploiting the capabilities of SO/PHI, an instrument for which the IAA has high responsibility because it is the co-PI institution.

Period (months): 36 months