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This licentiate thesis provides a broad introduction into the methodology of detecting and characterising exoplanets, with the main focus on the method of high-contrast imaging (HCI). Developments in theoretical knowledge as well as instrumentation have, in the past decade, pushed the boundaries of what HCI can achieve, both in terms of detection sensitivity and constraining planet properties. Direct imaging surveys in the near infrared (NIR) and longward wavelengths have proven particularly useful in detecting younger giant planets at wide orbital separations. The scientific work presented as part of this thesis is one such result of an imaging pursuit of the young giant planet, ϵ Ind Ab, which has long eluded NIR imaging surveys in the past, yet revealing its existence via radial velocity trends and astrometry of the parent star. It resides in the very interesting ϵ Ind stellar system, revolving around the primary star ϵ Ind A which is a Sun-like star only ∼12 light years away and visible in the night sky to the naked eye. With the combination of imaging data from two mid infrared (MIR) instruments, advanced post-processing techniques as well as comparative analysis using different planet atmospheric models, this work was able to place tight constraints on the age of the system and mass of the planet, although no detection was achieved. The new constraints set a firm foundation for MIR imaging surveys for the planet in future, especially with the upcoming more sensitive, advanced instruments in the later half of the decade. MIR imaging surveys have gained increasing significance in the recent years, due to their ability to detect colder/ smaller planets. It plays an important role in covering the missing gaps in the planet parameter space, ultimately aiding in improving our knowledge on planet formation and evolution.

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In the paper attached to this thesis, Paper I, we have calculated the flux of neutrinos that emanate from cosmic ray collisions in the solar atmosphere. These neutrinos are created in the cascades that follow the primary collision and can travel from their production point to a detector on Earth, interacting with the solar material and oscillating on the way. The motivation is both a better understanding of the cosmic ray interactions in the solar environment but also the fact that this neutrino flux presents an almost irreducible background for the searches for neutrinos from annihilations between dark matter particles in the Sun’s core. This interesting connection between neutrinos and dark matter make use of the Sun as a laboratory to investigate new models of particle physics. If dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), the Sun will sweep up some of these WIMPs when it moves through the halo of dark matter that our galaxy lies in. These WIMPs will become gravitationally bound to the Sun and over time accumulate in the Sun’s core. In most models WIMPs can annihilate to Standard Model particles when encountering each other. The only particle that can make it out of the Sun without being absorbed is the neutrino. The buildup of WIMPs in the solar interior can therefore lead to a detectable flux of neutrinos. Neutrino telescopes therefore search for an excess of neutrinos from the Sun. To be able to ensure that a detected flux is in fact coming from dark matter annihilations one must properly account for all other sources of neutrinos. At higher energies these are primarily neutrinos created in energetic collisions between cosmic rays and particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, but also the solar atmospheric neutrinos. The latter will be tougher to disentangle from a WIMP signal since they also come from the Sun. We calculate in Paper I the creation of the neutrinos in the solar atmosphere and propagate these neutrinos to a detector on Earth, including oscillations and interactions in the Sun and vacuum oscillations between the Sun and the Earth. We find that the expected flux is small but potentially detectable by current neutrino telescopes, although further studies are needed to fully ascertain the possibility of discovery as well as how to properly disentangle this from a potential WIMP-induced neutrino signal.

The focus of this thesis is to investigate magnetic reconnection in the solar chromosphere by usinghigh spatial resolution data including polarimetric signals. Magnetic reconnection occurs whenmagnetic field lines of different directions come in contact and change the configuration of the fieldlines. When this happens in the solar atmosphere, magnetic energy is transformed into thermalenergy (heating) and kinetic energy. This is observed as brightenings and fast plasma motions. The data was taken with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) on La Palma (Spain) in 2016 andincludes the spectral lines CaIIK, CaII8542 Å , FeI6301/6302 Å and Hα. The observations ofCaII8542 Å and FeI6301/6302 Å also include polarimetric signals. The analysis is done by inferringthe atmospheric conditions in which the events are evolving with the inversion code STiC using thefirst three lines mentioned. Before the inversion, several methods were used to improve the datasuch as denoising using a convolution neural network. The improvements were done to enhancethe polarimetric signals of Stokes Q and U. These signals are usually hard to detect since thepolarization signal is smaller by a factor 10^3-10^4 than the observed intensity. In this thesis, two reconnection events were studied in detail. The first event was identified as anEllerman bomb type event. We detect a compact, smaller than 12, enhancement in the temperatureand bidirectional flow of plasma where two magnetic concentrations of opposite polarities came incontact. The second event is identified as a light-bridge jet type event where the vertical magneticfield of a pore is interacting with the horizontal magnetic field of a light bridge. It is characterized bystrong fan-shaped jets, high-velocity plasma flows, and an elongated temperature enhancement.

The formation of magnetic flux concentrations in the Sun is still a matter of debate. One observable manifestations of such concentrations is sunspots. A mechanism able to spontaneously form magnetic flux concentrations in strongly stratified hydromagnetic turbulence and in the presence of a weak magnetic field is the negative effective magnetic pressure instability (NEMPI). This instability is caused by the local suppression of the turbulence by the magnetic field. Due to the complexity of the system, and in order to understand the fundamental physics behind the instability, the study started by considering simplified conditions. In this thesis we aim to move towards the complexity of the Sun. Here we want to know whether the instability can develop under rotation and in the case of a polytropic stratification instead of the simpler isothermal stratification. We perform different kinds of simulations, namely direct numerical simulations (DNS)and mean field simulations (MFS) of strongly stratified turbulence in the presence of weak magnetic fields. We then study separately the effects of rotation and the change in stratification. It is found that slow rotation can suppress the instability. For Coriolis numbers larger than $0.1$ the MFS no longer result in growth, whereas the DNS start first with adecreaseof the growth rate of the instability % with the speed-up of rotation is alleviated and then, for $\Co > 0.06$, an increase owing to the fact that rotation leads to  the onset of the dynamo instability, which couples with NEMPI in a combined system. In fact, the suppression implies a constraint on the depth where the instability can operate in the Sun. Since rotation is very weak in the uppermost layers of the Sun, the formation of the flux concentration through this instability might be a shallow phenomenon. The same constraint is found when we study the effects of polytropic stratificationon NEMPI. In this case, the instability also develops, but it is much more concentrated in the upper parts of the simulation domain than in the isothermal case. In contrast to the isothermal case, where the density scale height is constant inthe computational domain, polytropic layers decrease their stratification deeper down, so it becomes harder for NEMPI to operate. With these studies we confirm that NEMPI can form magnetic flux concentrations even in the presence of weak rotation and for polytropic stratification. When applied to the Sun, the effects of rotation and the change of stratification constrain the depth where NEMPI can develop to the uppermost layers, where the rotational influence is weak and the stratification is strong enough.

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Helically shaped magnetic field structuresknown as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are closely related to so-called eruptive flares. On the one hand, these events are broadly believed to be due tothe buoyant rise of magnetic flux tubes from the bottom of the convection zone to the photosphere where they form structures such as sunspots. On the other hand, models of eruptive flares and CMEs have no connection to the convection zone and the magnetic field generated bydynamo action. It is well known that a dynamo can produce helical structures and twisted magnetic fields as observed in the Sun. In this work we ask, how a dynamo-generated magnetic field appears above the surface without buoyancy force and how this field evolves inthe outer atmosphere of the Sun. We apply a new approach of a two layer model, where the lower one represents the convection zone and the upper one the solar corona. The two layers are included in one single simulation domain. In the lower layer, we use a helical forcing function added to the momentum equation to create a turbulent dynamo. Due to dynamo action, a large-scale field is formed. As a first step we use a Cartesian cube. We solve the equations of the so-called force-free model in the upper layer to create nearly force-free coronal magnetic fields. In a second step we use a spherical wedge, which extends radially from 0.7 to 2 solar radii. We include density stratification due to gravity in anisothermal domain. The wedge includes both hemispheres of the Sun and we apply a helicalforcing with different signs in each hemisphere. As a result, a large-scale field is generated by a turbulent dynamo acting underneath the surface. Due to the latitudinal variation of the helicity produced by the helical forcing, the dynamo is oscillating in the spherical wedge. Twisted magnetic fields emerge above the surface and form arch-like structures with strong current sheets. Plasmoids and CME-like structures are ejected recurrently into the outerlayers. In the spherical simulations we find that the magnetic helicity changes sign in the exterior, which is in agreement with recent analysis of the solar wind data.

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