How Does Coronal Magnetic Reconnection Generate Solar Wind Structures and What Will PUNCH See?

One of the key goals of the PUNCH mission is to determine how much and what types of ambient solar wind structures are generated in the corona, and how much and what type of solar wind structures develop in the solar wind through processes like turbulence. The recent revolution in heliospheric measurements, brought about by NASAʼs Parker Solar Probe and ESAʼs Solar Orbiter, has shown that processes in the middle corona can influence the structure and variability of the solar wind across spatial scales. Here we discuss recent advances on this topic, including modeling efforts to study the injection of solar wind structure through the process of coronal magnetic reconnection. We discuss the important advancements that will be made possible by PUNCH observations, including synergies between PUNCH and current and future heliospheric mission observations.