| 1. |
- Battaglia, Andrea Francesco, et al.
(author)
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The Alfvenic nature of chromospheric swirls
- 2021
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In: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 649
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Context. Observations show that small-scale vortical plasma motions are ubiquitous in the quiet solar atmosphere. They have received increasing attention in recent years because they are a viable candidate mechanism for the heating of the outer solar atmospheric layers. However, the true nature and the origin of these swirls, and their effective role in the energy transport, are still unclear.Aims. We investigate the evolution and origin of chromospheric swirls by analyzing numerical simulations of the quiet solar atmosphere. In particular, we are interested in finding their relation with magnetic field perturbations and in the processes driving their evolution.Methods. The radiative magnetohydrodynamic code CO5BOLD is used to perform realistic numerical simulations of a small portion of the solar atmosphere, ranging from the top layers of the convection zone to the middle chromosphere. For the analysis, the swirling strength criterion and its evolution equation are applied in order to identify vortical motions and to study their dynamics. As a new criterion, we introduce the magnetic swirling strength, which allows us to recognize torsional perturbations in the magnetic field.Results. We find a strong correlation between swirling strength and magnetic swirling strength, in particular in intense magnetic flux concentrations, which suggests a tight relation between vortical motions and torsional magnetic field perturbations. Furthermore, we find that swirls propagate upward with the local Alfven speed as unidirectional swirls driven by magnetic tension forces alone. In the photosphere and low chromosphere, the rotation of the plasma co-occurs with a twist in the upwardly directed magnetic field that is in the opposite direction of the plasma flow. All together, these are clear characteristics of torsional Alfven waves. Yet, the Alfven wave is not oscillatory but takes the form of a unidirectional pulse. The novelty of the present work is that these Alfven pulses naturally emerge from realistic numerical simulations of the solar atmosphere. We also find indications of an imbalance between the hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic baroclinic effects being at the origin of the swirls. At the base of the chromosphere, we find a mean net upwardly directed Poynting flux of 12.86.5 kW m(-2), which is mainly due to swirling motions. This energy flux is mostly associated with large and complex swirling structures, which we interpret as the superposition of various small-scale vortices.Conclusions. We conclude that the ubiquitous swirling events observed in numerical simulations are tightly correlated with perturbations of the magnetic field. At photospheric and chromospheric levels, they form Alfven pulses that propagate upward and may contribute to chromospheric heating.
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| 2. |
- Bjørgen, Johan Pires, 1989-
(author)
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The synthetic chromosphere : Results and techniques with a numerical approach
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Realistic numerical simulations of the solar atmosphere can be used to interpret different phenomena observed on the solar surface. To gain insight into the atmospheric physical conditions, we compare the observations with 3D radiative magnetohydrodynamic models combined with forward modeling (radiative transfer). This thesis focuses particularly on the less understood chromospheric layer between the photosphere and the transition region. Only a few and complex spectral lines can probe the chromosphere making its observations a real challenge.The chromospheric environment is strongly influenced by departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE), horizontal radiative transfer (3D effects), and partially-coherent scattering of photons (partial redistribution effects). All these effects make the detailed 3D non-LTE radiative transfer very computationally demanding.In paper I, we focus on increasing the efficiency of non-LTE modeling of spectral lines in realistic solar models. We implemented a non-linear multigrid solver into the Multi3D code and showed that the method can handle realistic model atmospheres produced by radiative-MHD simulations. We obtained a speed-up of a factor 4.5-6 compared to multilevel accelerated lambda iteration.In paper II, we studied the chromospheric resonance lines Ca \textsc{ii} H\&K. Understanding their formation is crucial to interpreting the observations from the new imaging spectrometer CHROMIS, recently installed at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. We investigated how the synthetic observables of Ca \textsc{ii} H\&K lines are related to atmospheric parameters.In paper III, we investigated a simulated active region including flux emergence that produced a flare. We modeled strong chromospheric lines, such as Ca \textsc{ii} H\&K, 8542 \AA, Mg \textsc{ii} h\&k, and H-$\alpha$, to investigate how it appears in synthetic images and spectra.
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| 3. |
- Riva, Fabio, et al.
(author)
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Simulating small-scale dynamo action in cool main-sequence stars
- 2024
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In: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 684
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Context: The origin of the ubiquitous small-scale magnetic field observed on the solar surface can be attributed to the presence of a small-scale dynamo (SSD) operating in the sub-surface layers of the Sun. It is expected that a similar process could self-sustain a considerable amount of magnetic energy also in the near-surface layers of cool main-sequence stars other than the Sun.Aims: In this paper the properties of the magnetic field resulting from SSD action operating in the near-surface layers of four cool main-sequence stars and its self-organization into magnetic flux concentrations are investigated numerically.Methods: Three-dimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations of SSD action in the near-surface layers of four cool main-sequence stars of spectral types K8V, K2V, G2V, and F5V are carried out with the (CO5BOLD) code. The simulations are set up to have approximately the same Reynolds and magnetic Reynolds numbers, and to disentangle the impact of the effective temperature and the surface gravity on the SSD action from numerical effects.Results: It is found that the SSD growth rates in SI units differ for the four stellar models; the highest and lowest growth rate is for the K2V and F5V model, respectively. This is due to the different turnover times in the four simulations. Even so, the SSD field strengths reached in the saturation phases are similar in all models, with the same amount of kinetic energy converted into magnetic energy. If the magnetic energy that is pumped out from the computational domain across the bottom boundary is partially replenished from outside of the computational domain, we find that the SSD action leads to a sufficient reduction in the convective velocities to reduce the convective horizontal length scales in the convection zone by 5-10%, vanishing towards the optical depth unity level. In this case, strong kilogauss magnetic flux concentrations emerge at the surface, leading to magnetic bright features, which are more numerous and conspicuous for the K2V and G2V models than for the K8V and F5V models. Their vertical magnetic field component on the surface of optical depth unity increases from 1 kG to 1.6 kG with decreasing effective temperature from F5V to K8V. However, more than 90% of the magnetic flux through any of these stellar surfaces has a field strength of less than 1 kG.
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| 4. |
- Steiner, Oskar, et al.
(author)
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Properties of small-scale magnetism of stellar atmospheres
- 2014
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In: Nippon Tenmon Gakkai obun kenkyu hokoku. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0004-6264. ; 66:SI1, s. S5-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The magnetic field outside of sunspots is concentrated in the intergranular space, where it forms a delicate filigree of bright ribbons and dots as seen on broad band images of the Sun. We expect this small-scale magnetic field to exhibit a similar behavior in stellar atmospheres. In order to find out more about it, we perform numerical simulations of the surface layers of stellar atmospheres. Here, we report on preliminary results from simulations in the range between 4000 K and 6500 K effective temperature with an initial vertical, homogeneous magnetic field of 50 G strength. We find that the field strength of the strongest magnetic flux concentrations increases with decreasing effective temperature at the height level where the average Rosseland optical depth is one. On the other hand, at the same level, the field is less strong than the thermal equipartition value in the coolest model but assumes superequipartition in the models hotter than 5000 K. While the Wilson depression of the strongest field concentrations is about one pressure scale height in the coolest model, it is more than four times the pressure scale height in the hottest one. We also find that the relative contribution of the bright filigree to the bolometric, vertically directed radiative intensity is most significant for the T-eff = 5000 K model (0.6%-0.79%) and least significant for the hottest and coolest models (0.1%-0.46% and 0.14%-0.32%, respectively). This behavior suggests that the effect of the small-scale magnetic field on the photometric variability is more significant for K dwarf stars than for F-type and also M-type stars.
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| 5. |
- Wedemeyer-Bohm, Sven, et al.
(author)
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Magnetic tornadoes as energy channels into the solar corona
- 2012
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In: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 486:7404, s. 505-508
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Heating the outer layers of the magnetically quiet solar atmosphere to more than one million kelvin and accelerating the solar wind requires an energy flux of approximately 100 to 300 watts per square metre(1-6), but how this energy is transferred and dissipated there is a puzzle and several alternative solutions have been proposed. Braiding and twisting of magnetic field structures, which is caused by the convective flows at the solar surface, was suggested as an efficient mechanism for atmospheric heating(7). Convectively driven vortex flows that harbour magnetic fields are observed(8-10) to be abundant in the photosphere (the visible surface of the Sun). Recently, corresponding swirling motions have been discovered(11) in the chromosphere, the atmospheric layer sandwiched between the photosphere and the corona. Here we report the imprints of these chromospheric swirls in the transition region and low corona, and identify them as observational signatures of rapidly rotating magnetic structures. These ubiquitous structures, which resemble super-tornadoes under solar conditions, reach from the convection zone into the upper solar atmosphere and provide an alternative mechanism for channelling energy from the lower into the upper solar atmosphere.
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