scholarly journals Revisiting the formation mechanism for coronal rain from previous studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 255
Author(s):  
Le-Ping Li ◽  
Hardi Peter ◽  
Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta ◽  
Hong-Qiang Song

Abstract Solar coronal rain is classified generally into two categories: flare-driven and quiescent coronal rain. Th latter is observed to form along both closed and open magnetic field structures. Recently, we proposed that some of the quiescent coronal rain events, detected in the transition region and chromospheric diagnostics, along loop-like paths could be explained by the formation mechanism for quiescent coronal rain facilitated by interchange magnetic reconnection between open and closed field lines. In this study, we revisited 38 coronal rain reports from the literature. From theseearlier works, we picked 15 quiescent coronal rain events out of the solar limb, mostly suggested to occur in active region closed loops due to thermal nonequilibrium, to scrutinize their formation mechanism. Employing the extreme ultraviolet images and line-of-sight magnetograms, the evolution of the quiescent coronal rain events and their magnetic fields and context coronal structures is examined. We find that six, comprising 40%, of the 15 quiescent coronal rain events could be totally or partially interpreted by the formation mechanism for quiescent coronal rain along open structures facilitated by interchange reconnection. The results suggest that the quiescent coronal rain facilitated by interchange reconnection between open and closed field lines deserves more attention.

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S354) ◽  
pp. 228-231
Author(s):  
Chia-Hsien Lin ◽  
Guan-Han Huang ◽  
Lou-Chuang Lee

AbstractCoronal holes can be identified as the darkest regions in EUV or soft X-ray images with predominantly unipolar magnetic fields (LIRs) or as the regions with open magnetic fields (OMF). Our study reveals that only 12% of OMF regions are coincident with LIRs. The aim of this study is to investigate the conditions that affect the EUV intensity of OMF regions. Our results indicate that the EUV intensity and the magnetic field expansion factor of the OMF regions are weakly positively correlated when plotted in logarithmic scale, and that the bright OMF regions are likely to locate inside or next to the regions with closed field lines. We empirically determined a linear relationship between the expansion factor and the EUV intensity. The relationship is demonstrated to improve the consistency from 12% to 23%. The results have been published in Astrophysical Journal (Huang et al. 2019).


2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (4) ◽  
pp. 4816-4829
Author(s):  
Z X Mei ◽  
R Keppens ◽  
Q W Cai ◽  
J Ye ◽  
X Y Xie ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present a 3D magnetohydrodynamic numerical experiment of an eruptive magnetic flux rope (MFR) and the various types of disturbances it creates, and employ forward modelling of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) observables to directly compare numerical results and observations. In the beginning, the MFR erupts and a fast shock appears as an expanding 3D dome. Under the MFR, a current sheet grows, in which magnetic field lines reconnect to form closed field lines, which become the outermost part of an expanding coronal mass ejection (CME) bubble. In our synthetic SDO/AIA images, we can observe the bright fast shock dome and the hot MFR in the early stages. Between the MFR and the fast shock, a dimming region appears. Later, the MFR expands so its brightness decays and it becomes difficult to identify the boundary of the CME bubble and distinguish it from the bright MFR in synthetic images. Our synthetic images for EUV disturbances observed at the limb support the bimodality interpretation for coronal disturbances. However, images for disturbances propagating on-disc do not support this interpretation because the morphology of the bright MFR does not lead to circular features in the EUV disturbances. At the flanks of the CME bubble, slow shocks, velocity vortices and shock echoes can also be recognized in the velocity distribution. The slow shocks at the flanks of the bubble are associated with a 3D velocity separatrix. These features are found in our high-resolution simulation, but may be hard to observe as shown in the synthetic images.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guan-Han Huang ◽  
Chia-Hsien Lin ◽  
Lou Chuang Lee

<p>Coronal holes can be identified as the regions with magnetic field lines extending far away from the Sun, or the darkest regions in EUV/X-ray images with predominantly unipolar magnetic fields. A comparison between the locations of our determined regions with open magnetic field lines (OMF) and regions with low EUV intensity (LIR) reveals that only 12% of the OMF regions coincide with the LIRs. The aim of this study is to investigate the conditions leading to the different brightnesses of OMF regions, and to provide a means to predict whether an OMF region would be bright or dark. Examining the statistical distribution profiles of the magnetic field expansion factor (f<sub>s</sub>) and Atmospheric Imaging Assembly 193 Å intensity (I<sub>193</sub>) reveals that both profiles are approximately log-normal. The analysis of the spatial and temporal distributions of f<sub>s</sub> and I<sub>193</sub> indicates that the bright OMF regions often are inside or next to regions with closed field lines, including quiet-Sun regions and regions with strong magnetic fields. Examining the relationship between I<sub>193</sub> and f<sub>s</sub> reveals a weak positive correlation between log I<sub>193</sub> and log f<sub>s</sub> , with a correlation coefficient ≈ 0.39. As a first-order approximation, the positive relationship is determined to be log I<sub>193</sub> = 0.62 log f<sub>s</sub> + 1.51 based on the principle of the whitening/dewhitening transformation. This linear relationship is demonstrated to increase the consistency between the OMF regions and LIRs from 12% to 23%.</p>


1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 1246-1256 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Davis ◽  
M. Lockwood

Abstract. Early in 1996, the latest of the European incoherent-scatter (EISCAT) radars came into operation on the Svalbard islands. The EISCAT Svalbard Radar (ESR) has been built in order to study the ionosphere in the northern polar cap and in particular, the dayside cusp. Conditions in the upper atmosphere in the cusp region are complex, with magnetosheath plasma cascading freely into the atmosphere along open magnetic field lines as a result of magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause. A model has been developed to predict the effects of pulsed reconnection and the subsequent cusp precipitation in the ionosphere. Using this model we have successfully recreated some of the major features seen in photometer and satellite data within the cusp. In this paper, the work is extended to predict the signatures of pulsed reconnection in ESR data when the radar is pointed along the magnetic field. It is expected that enhancements in both electron concentration and electron temperature will be observed. Whether these enhancements are continuous in time or occur as a series of separate events is shown to depend critically on where the open/closed field-line boundary is with respect to the radar. This is shown to be particularly true when reconnection pulses are superposed on a steady background rate.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-Gu Yoo ◽  
Weixing Wang ◽  
Edward A Startsev ◽  
Chenhao Ma ◽  
S Ethier ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léa Griton ◽  
Sarah Watson ◽  
Nicolas Poirier ◽  
Alexis Rouillard ◽  
Karine Issautier ◽  
...  

<p>Different states of the slow solar wind are identified from in-situ measurements by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) inside 50 solar radii from the Sun (Encounters 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6). At such distances the wind measured at PSP has not yet undergone significant transformation related to the expansion and propagation of the wind. We focus in this study on the properties of the quiet solar wind with no magnetic switchbacks. The Slow Solar Wind (SSW) states differ by their density, flux, plasma beta and magnetic pressure. PSP's magnetic connectivity established with Potential Field Source Surface (PFSS) reconstructions, tested against extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and white-light imaging, reveals the different states under study generally correspond to transitions from streamers to equatorial coronal holes. Solar wind simulations run along these differing flux tubes reproduce the slower and denser wind measured in the streamer and the more tenuous wind measured in the coronal hole. Plasma heating is more intense at the base of the streamer field lines rooted near the boundary of the equatorial hole than those rooted closer to the center of the hole. This results in a higher wind flux driven inside the streamer than deeper inside the equatorial hole. </p>


1990 ◽  
Vol 45 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 1074-1076
Author(s):  
Dario Correa-Restrepo

Abstract A class of stability criteria is derived for MHD equilibria with closed field lines. The destabilizing perturbations have finite gradients along the field and are localized around a field line, the localiza-tion being stronger on the pressure surface than in the radial direction. By contrast, in sheared configurations the localization is comparable in both directions. The derived stability criteria are less stringent than those obtained for MHD equilibria with shear for similarly localized perturbations in the limit of low shear. These results, obtained from the energy principle, are a particular case of those obtained by solving the linearized resistive MHD equations with an appropriate ansatz and subsequently taking the limit of vanishing shear and resistivity.


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