Liu, J. orcid.org/0000-0003-2569-1840, Nelson, C.J., Snow, B. et al. (2 more authors) (2019) Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere. Nature Communications, 10 (1).
Abstract
The multi-million degree temperature increase from the middle to the upper solar atmosphere is one of the most fascinating puzzles in plasma-astrophysics. Although magnetic waves might transport enough energy from the photosphere to heat up the local chromosphere and corona, observationally validating their ubiquity has proved challenging. Here, we show observational evidence that ubiquitous Alfvén pulses are excited by prevalent intensity swirls in the solar photosphere. Correlation analysis between swirls detected at different heights in the solar atmosphere, together with realistic numerical simulations, show that these Alfvén pulses propagate upwards and reach chromospheric layers. We found that Alfvén pulses carry sufficient energy flux (1.9 to 7.7 kW m−2) to balance the local upper chromospheric energy losses (~0.1 kW m−2) in quiet regions. Whether this wave energy flux is actually dissipated in the chromosphere and can lead to heating that balances the losses is still an open question.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 13 Sep 2019 10:55 |
Last Modified: | 17 Sep 2019 12:09 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-019-11495-0 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:150636 |