Acoustic Wave Properties in Footpoints of Coronal Loops in 3D MHD Simulations

Acoustic waves excited in the photosphere and below might play an integral part in the heating of the solar chromosphere and corona. However, it is yet not fully clear how much of the initially acoustic wave flux reaches the corona and in what form. We investigate the wave propagation, damping, transmission, and conversion in the lower layers of the solar atmosphere using 3D numerical MHD simulations. A model of a gravitationally stratified expanding straight coronal loop, stretching from photosphere to photosphere, is perturbed at one footpoint by an acoustic driver with a period of 370 s. For this period, acoustic cutoff regions are present below the transition region (TR). About 2% of the initial energy from the driver reaches the corona. The shape of the cutoff regions and the height of the TR show a highly dynamic behavior. Taking only the driven waves into account, the waves have a propagating nature below and above the cutoff region, but are standing and evanescent within the cutoff region. Studying the driven waves together with the background motions in the model reveals standing waves between the cutoff region and the TR. These standing waves cause an oscillation of the TR height. In addition, fast or leaky sausage body-like waves might have been excited close to the base of the loop. These waves then possibly convert to fast or leaky sausage surface-like waves at the top of the main cutoff region, followed by a conversion to slow sausage body-like waves around the TR.

Efficient Numerical Treatment of Ambipolar and Hall Drift as Hyperbolic System

Partially ionized plasmas, such as the solar chromosphere, require a generalized Ohm’s law including the effects of ambipolar and Hall drift. While both describe transport processes that arise from the multifluid equations and are therefore of hyperbolic nature, they are often incorporated in models as a diffusive, i.e., parabolic process. While the formulation as such is easy to include in standard MHD models, the resulting diffusive time-step constraints do require often a computationally more expensive implicit treatment or super-time-stepping approaches. In this paper we discuss an implementation that retains the hyperbolic nature and allows for an explicit integration with small computational overhead. In the case of ambipolar drift, this formulation arises naturally by simply retaining a time derivative of the drift velocity that is typically omitted. This alone leads to time-step constraints that are comparable to the native MHD time-step constraint for a solar setup including the region from photosphere to lower solar corona. We discuss an accelerated treatment that can further reduce time-step constraints if necessary. In the case of Hall drift we propose a hyperbolic formulation that is numerically similar to that for the ambipolar drift and we show that the combination of both can be applied to simulations of the solar chromosphere at minimal computational expense.

First results from combined EUI and SPICE observations of Lyman lines of Hydrogen and He II

<p>The Solar Orbiter spacecraft carries a powerful set of remote sensing instruments that allow studying the solar atmosphere with unprecedented diagnostic capabilities. Many such diagnostics require the simultaneous usage of more than one instrument. One example of that is the capability, for the first time, to obtain (near) simultaneous spatially resolved observations of the emission from the first three lines of the Lyman series of hydrogen and of He II Lyman alpha. In fact, the SPectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) spectrometer can observe the Lyman beta and gamma lines in its long wavelength (SPICE-LW) channel, the High Resolution Lyman Alpha (HRILYA) telescope of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) acquires narrow band images in the Lyman alpha line while the Full Disk Imager (FSI) of EUI can take images dominated by the Lyman alpha line of ionized Helium at 30.4 nm (FSI-304). Being hydrogen and helium the main components of our star, these very bright transitions play an important role in the energy budget of the outer atmosphere via radiative losses and the measurement of their profiles and radiance ratios is a fundamental constraint to any comprehensive modelization effort of the upper solar chromosphere and transition region. Additionally, monitoring their average ratios can serve as a check out for the relative radiometric performance of the two instruments throughout the mission.</p><p>Although the engineering data acquired so far are far from ideal in terms of time simultaneity (often only within about 1 h) and line coverage (often only Lyman beta was acquired by SPICE and not always near simultaneous images from all three telescopes are available) the analysis we present here still offers a great opportunity to have a first look at the potential of this diagnostic from the two instruments.</p><p>In fact, we have identified a series of datasets obtained at disk center and at various positions at the solar limb that allow studying the Lyman alpha to beta radiance ratio and their relation to He II 30.4 as a function of the position on the Sun (disk center versus limb and quiet Sun versus coronal holes).</p>

An observationally constrained model of strong magnetic reconnection in the solar chromosphere

Context. The evolution of the photospheric magnetic field plays a key role in the energy transport into the chromosphere and the corona. In active regions, newly emerging magnetic flux interacts with the pre-existent magnetic field, which can lead to reconnection events that convert magnetic energy into thermal energy. Aims. We aim to study the heating caused by a strong reconnection event that was triggered by magnetic flux cancelation. Methods. We use imaging and spectropolarimetric data in the Fe I 6301& 6302 Å, Ca II 8542 Å, and Ca II K spectral lines obtained with the CRISP and CHROMIS instruments at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. These data were inverted with the STiC code by performing multi-atom, multi-line, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium inversions. These inversions yielded a three-dimensional model of the reconnection event and surrounding atmosphere, including temperature, velocity, microturbulence, magnetic field, and radiative loss rate. Results. The model atmosphere shows the emergence of magnetic loops with a size of several arcseconds into a pre-existing predominantly unipolar field. Where the reconnection region is expected to be, we see an increase in the chromospheric temperature of roughly 2000 K as well as bidirectional flows of the order of 10 km s−1 emanating from there. We see bright blobs of roughly 0.2 arcsec in diameter in the Ca II K, moving at a plane-of-the-sky velocity of the order of 100 km s−1 and a blueshift of 100 km s−1, which we interpret as ejected plasmoids from the same region. This scenario is consistent with theoretical reconnection models, and therefore provides evidence of a reconnection event taking place. The chromospheric radiative losses at the reconnection site are as high as 160 kW m−2, providing a quantitative constraint on theoretical models that aim to simulate reconnection caused by flux emergence in the chromosphere.