Search results for "Physics::Space Physics"
showing 10 items of 357 documents
Reconnection nanojets in the solar corona
2020
P.A. acknowledges STFC support from grant numbers ST/R004285/2 and ST/T000384/1 and support from the International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland to the International Teams on ‘Implications for coronal heating and magnetic fields from coronal rain observations and modeling’ and ‘Observed Multi-Scale Variability of Coronal Loops as a Probe of Coronal Heating’. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 647214). P.T. was also supported by contracts 8100002705 and SP02H1701R from Lockheed-Martin to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), and NASA c…
Statistical Signatures of Nanoflare Activity. I. Monte Carlo Simulations and Parameter-space Exploration
2019
Small-scale magnetic reconnection processes, in the form of nanoflares, have become increasingly hypothesized as important mechanisms for the heating of the solar atmosphere, for driving propagating disturbances along magnetic field lines in the Sun's corona, and for instigating rapid jet-like bursts in the chromosphere. Unfortunately, the relatively weak signatures associated with nanoflares places them below the sensitivities of current observational instrumentation. Here, we employ Monte Carlo techniques to synthesize realistic nanoflare intensity time series from a dense grid of power-law indices and decay timescales. Employing statistical techniques, which examine the modeled intensity…
Large-amplitude Quasiperiodic Pulsations as Evidence of Impulsive Heating in Hot Transient Loop Systems Detected in the EUV with SDO/AIA
2019
Short heat pulses can trigger plasma pressure fronts inside closed magnetic tubes in the corona. The alternation of condensations and rarefactions from the pressure modes drive large-amplitude pulsations in the plasma emission. Here we show the detection of such pulsations along magnetic tubes that brighten transiently in the hot 94A EUV channel of SDO/AIA. The pulsations are consistent with those predicted by hydrodynamic loop modeling, and confirm pulsed heating in the loop system. The comparison of observations and model provides constraints on the heat deposition: a good agreement requires loop twisting and pulses deposited close to the footpoints with a duration of 0.5 min in one loop,…
A SELF-SIMILAR EXPANSION MODEL FOR USE IN SOLAR WIND TRANSIENT PROPAGATION STUDIES
2012
Since the advent of wide-angle imaging of the inner heliosphere, a plethora of techniques have been developed to investigate the three-dimensional structure and kinematics of solar wind transients, such as coronal mass ejections, from their signatures in single- and multi-spacecraft imaging observations. These techniques, which range from the highly complex and computationally intensive to methods based on simple curve fitting, all have their inherent advantages and limitations. In the analysis of single-spacecraft imaging observations, much use has been made of the fixed fitting (FPF) and harmonic mean fitting (HMF) techniques, in which the solar wind transient is considered to be a radial…
Waveguidability of idealized midlatitude jets and the limitations of ray tracing theory
2020
Abstract. Ray paths of stationary Rossby waves emanating from a local midlatitude source are usually refracted equatorward. However, this general tendency for equatorward propagation is mitigated by the presence of a midlatitude jet that acts as a zonal waveguide. This opens up the possibility of circum-global teleconnections and quasi-resonance, which suggests that the ability to guide a wave in the zonal direction is an important jet property. This paper investigates waveguidability of idealized midlatitude jets in a barotropic model on the sphere. A forced-dissipative model configuration with a local source for Rossby waves is used in order to quantify waveguidability by diagnosing the l…
Modeling a coronal loop heated by magnetohydrodynamic turbulence nanoflares
2005
We model the hydrodynamic evolution of the plasma confined in a coronal loop, 30,000 km long, subject to the heating of nanoflares due to intermittent magnetic dissipative events in the MHD turbulence produced by loop footpoint motions. We use the time-dependent distribution of energy dissipation along the loop obtained from a hybrid shell model, occurring for a magnetic field of about 10 G in the corona; the relevant heating per unit volume along the loop is used in the Palermo-Harvard loop plasma hydrodynamic model. We describe the results, focusing on the effects produced by the most intense heat pulses, which lead to loop temperatures between 1 and 1.5 MK.
Probing the internal solar magnetic field through g-modes
2006
The observation of g-mode candidates by the SoHO mission opens the possibility of probing the internal structure of the solar radiative zone (RZ) and the solar core more directly than possible via the use of the p-mode helioseismology data. We study the effect of rotation and RZ magnetic fields on g-mode frequencies. Using a self-consistent static MHD magnetic field model we show that a 1% g-mode frequency shift with respect to the Solar Seismic Model (SSeM) prediction, currently hinted in the GOLF data, can be obtained for magnetic fields as low as 300 kG, for current measured modes of radial order n=-20. On the other hand, we also argue that a similar shift for the case of the low order g…
The Sun as an X‐Ray Star. IV. The Contribution of Different Regions of the Corona to Its X‐Ray Spectrum
2001
We study X-ray-synthesized spectra of solar regions as templates to interpret analogous stellar spectra. We define three classes of coronal structures of different brightness, low (background quiet corona), medium (active regions), and high (active region cores), and determine their contribution to the solar X-ray emission measure versus temperature, EM(T), luminosity, and spectrum. This study defines the extent of the solar analogy quantitatively and accurately. To this end, we have selected a large sample of full-disk Yohkoh soft X-ray telescope observations taken between the maximum and the minimum of solar cycle 22, obtaining the contribution of each class to the whole Sun's EM(T). From…
Post-flare evolution of AR 10923 with Hinode/XRT
2010
Flares are dynamic events which involve rapid changes in coronal magnetic topology end energy release. Even if they may be localized phenomena, the magnetic disturbance at their origin may propagate and be effective in a larger part of the active region. We investigate the temporal evolution of a flaring active region with respect to the loops morphology, the temperature, and emission measure distributions. We consider $Hinode/XRT$ data of a the 2006 November 12th C1.1 flare. We inspect the evolution of the morphology of the flaring region also with the aid of TRACE data. XRT filter ratios are used to derive temperature and emission measure maps and evolution. The analyzed flare includes se…
X-ray optical depth diagnostics of T Tauri accretion shocks
2009
In classical T Tauri stars, X-rays are produced by two plasma components: a hot low-density plasma, with frequent flaring activity, and a high-density lower temperature plasma. The former is coronal plasma related to the stellar magnetic activity. The latter component, never observed in non-accreting stars, could be plasma heated by the shock formed by the accretion process. However its nature is still being debated. Our aim is to probe the soft X-ray emission from the high-density plasma component in classical T Tauri stars to check whether this is plasma heated in the accretion shock or whether it is coronal plasma. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy allows us to measure individual line f…