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Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions
The physical mechanisms behind accelerating solar and stellar winds are a long-standing astrophysical mystery, although recent breakthroughs have come from models invoking the turbulent dissipation of Alfvén waves. The existence of Alfvén waves far from the Sun has been known since the 1970s, and re...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Pub. Group
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525157/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26213234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8813 |
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author | Morton, R. J. Tomczyk, S. Pinto, R. |
author_facet | Morton, R. J. Tomczyk, S. Pinto, R. |
author_sort | Morton, R. J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The physical mechanisms behind accelerating solar and stellar winds are a long-standing astrophysical mystery, although recent breakthroughs have come from models invoking the turbulent dissipation of Alfvén waves. The existence of Alfvén waves far from the Sun has been known since the 1970s, and recently the presence of ubiquitous Alfvénic waves throughout the solar atmosphere has been confirmed. However, the presence of atmospheric Alfvénic waves does not, alone, provide sufficient support for wave-based models; the existence of counter-propagating Alfvénic waves is crucial for the development of turbulence. Here, we demonstrate that counter-propagating Alfvénic waves exist in open coronal magnetic fields and reveal key observational insights into the details of their generation, reflection in the upper atmosphere and outward propagation into the solar wind. The results enhance our knowledge of Alfvénic wave propagation in the solar atmosphere, providing support and constraints for some of the recent Alfvén wave turbulence models. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4525157 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Nature Pub. Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45251572015-09-04 Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions Morton, R. J. Tomczyk, S. Pinto, R. Nat Commun Article The physical mechanisms behind accelerating solar and stellar winds are a long-standing astrophysical mystery, although recent breakthroughs have come from models invoking the turbulent dissipation of Alfvén waves. The existence of Alfvén waves far from the Sun has been known since the 1970s, and recently the presence of ubiquitous Alfvénic waves throughout the solar atmosphere has been confirmed. However, the presence of atmospheric Alfvénic waves does not, alone, provide sufficient support for wave-based models; the existence of counter-propagating Alfvénic waves is crucial for the development of turbulence. Here, we demonstrate that counter-propagating Alfvénic waves exist in open coronal magnetic fields and reveal key observational insights into the details of their generation, reflection in the upper atmosphere and outward propagation into the solar wind. The results enhance our knowledge of Alfvénic wave propagation in the solar atmosphere, providing support and constraints for some of the recent Alfvén wave turbulence models. Nature Pub. Group 2015-07-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4525157/ /pubmed/26213234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8813 Text en Copyright © 2015, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Morton, R. J. Tomczyk, S. Pinto, R. Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
title | Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
title_full | Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
title_fullStr | Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
title_full_unstemmed | Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
title_short | Investigating Alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
title_sort | investigating alfvénic wave propagation in coronal open-field regions |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525157/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26213234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8813 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT mortonrj investigatingalfvenicwavepropagationincoronalopenfieldregions AT tomczyks investigatingalfvenicwavepropagationincoronalopenfieldregions AT pintor investigatingalfvenicwavepropagationincoronalopenfieldregions |