scholarly journals Filament Connectivity and “Reconnection”

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (S300) ◽  
pp. 412-413
Author(s):  
Boris Filippov

AbstractStable long lived solar filaments during their lives can approach each other, merge, and form circular structures. Since filaments follow large scale polarity inversion lines of the photospheric magnetic field, their evolution reflects changes of the photospheric field distribution. On the other hand, filament interaction depends on their internal magnetic structure reviled in particular by filament chirality. Possibility of magnetic field line reconnection of neighbor filaments is discussed. Many examples of connectivity changes in a course of photospheric field evolution were found in our analysis of daily Hα filtergrams for the period of maximum activity of the solar cycle 23.

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (S300) ◽  
pp. 172-175
Author(s):  
Duncan H. Mackay ◽  
Anthony R. Yeates

AbstractSolar filaments are known to exhibit a hemispheric pattern in their chirality, where dextral/sinistral filaments dominate in the northern/southern hemisphere. We show that this pattern may be explained through data driven 3D global magnetic field simulations of the Sun's large-scale magnetic field. Through a detailed comparison with 109 filaments over a 6 month period, the model correctly reproduces the filament chirality and helicity with a 96% agreement. The data driven simulation is extended to run over a full solar cycle, where predictions are made for the spatial and temporal dependence of the hemispheric pattern over the solar cycle.


2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory G. Howes ◽  
Sofiane Bourouaine

Plasma turbulence occurs ubiquitously in space and astrophysical plasmas, mediating the nonlinear transfer of energy from large-scale electromagnetic fields and plasma flows to small scales at which the energy may be ultimately converted to plasma heat. But plasma turbulence also generically leads to a tangling of the magnetic field that threads through the plasma. The resulting wander of the magnetic field lines may significantly impact a number of important physical processes, including the propagation of cosmic rays and energetic particles, confinement in magnetic fusion devices and the fundamental processes of turbulence, magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration. The various potential impacts of magnetic field line wander are reviewed in detail, and a number of important theoretical considerations are identified that may influence the development and saturation of magnetic field line wander in astrophysical plasma turbulence. The results of nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence of sub-ion length scales are evaluated to understand the development and saturation of the turbulent magnetic energy spectrum and of the magnetic field line wander. It is found that turbulent space and astrophysical plasmas are generally expected to contain a stochastic magnetic field due to the tangling of the field by strong plasma turbulence. Future work will explore how the saturated magnetic field line wander varies as a function of the amplitude of the plasma turbulence and the ratio of the thermal to magnetic pressure, known as the plasma beta.


1998 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 493-496
Author(s):  
Dmitri I. Ponyavin

AbstractA technique is used to restore the magnetic field of the Sun viewed as star from the filament distribution seen on Hα photographs. For this purpose synoptic charts of the large-scale magnetic field reconstructed by the McIntosh method have been compared with the Sun-asstar solar magnetic field observed at Stanford. We have established a close association between the Sun-as-star magnetic field and the mean magnetic field inferred from synoptic magnetic field maps. A filtering technique was applied to find correlations between the Sun-as-star and large-scale magnetic field distributions during the course of a solar cycle. The correlations found were then used to restore the Sun-as-star magnetic field and its evolution in the late 1950s and 1960s, when such measurements of the field were not being made. A stackplot display of the inferred data reveals large-scale magnetic field organization and evolution. Patterns of the Sun-as-star magnetic field during solar cycle 19 were obtained. The proposed technique can be useful for studying the solar magnetic field structure and evolution during times with no direct observations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (S328) ◽  
pp. 93-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Gibson ◽  
David Webb ◽  
Ian M. Hewins ◽  
Robert H. McFadden ◽  
Barbara A. Emery ◽  
...  

AbstractIn 1964 (Solar Cycle 20; SC 20), Patrick McIntosh began creating hand-drawn synoptic maps of solar magnetic features, based on Hα images. These synoptic maps were unique in that they traced magnetic polarity inversion lines, and connected widely separated filaments, fibril patterns, and plage corridors to reveal the large-scale organization of the solar magnetic field. Coronal hole boundaries were later added to the maps, which were produced, more or less continuously, into 2009 (i.e., the start of SC 24). The result was a record of ~45 years (~570 Carrington rotations), or nearly four complete solar cycles of synoptic maps. We are currently scanning, digitizing and archiving these maps, with the final, searchable versions publicly available at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. In this paper we present preliminary scientific studies using the archived maps from SC 23. We show the global evolution of closed magnetic structures (e.g., sunspots, plage, and filaments) in relation to open magnetic structures (e.g., coronal holes), and examine how both relate to the shifting patterns of large-scale positive and negative polarity regions.


2000 ◽  
Vol 529 (2) ◽  
pp. 1101-1114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliana de Toma ◽  
Oran R. White ◽  
Karen L. Harvey

1975 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
W. M. Glencross

SummaryBabcock (1961) outlined the sequence of events which takes place in the Sun's atmosphere during a solar cycle. Magnetic field loops, having preferred directions, emerge from the solar surface and thereafter merge with neighbouring loops to produce more extended structures. Although flux tubes emerge with a strong E-W field component, having the field direction reversed from one side of the equator to the other, there is a tendency for the longer loops produced by merging to have a significant N-S alignment (Hansen et al., 1972).


1971 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 744-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Wilcox

The solar sector structure consists of a boundary in the north-south direction such that on one side of the boundary the large-scale weak photospheric magnetic field is predominantly directed out of the Sun, and on the other side of the boundary this field is directed into the Sun. The region westward of a solar sector boundary tends to be unusually quiet and the region eastward of a solar sector boundary tends to be unusually active. This tendency is discussed in terms of flares, coronal enhancements, plage structure and geomagnetic response.


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