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Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere
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 validati...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683129/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31383869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11495-0 |
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author | Liu, Jiajia Nelson, Chris J. Snow, Ben Wang, Yuming Erdélyi, Robert |
author_facet | Liu, Jiajia Nelson, Chris J. Snow, Ben Wang, Yuming Erdélyi, Robert |
author_sort | Liu, Jiajia |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6683129 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66831292019-08-07 Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere Liu, Jiajia Nelson, Chris J. Snow, Ben Wang, Yuming Erdélyi, Robert Nat Commun Article 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. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6683129/ /pubmed/31383869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11495-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access 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. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Liu, Jiajia Nelson, Chris J. Snow, Ben Wang, Yuming Erdélyi, Robert Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
title | Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
title_full | Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
title_fullStr | Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
title_full_unstemmed | Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
title_short | Evidence of ubiquitous Alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
title_sort | evidence of ubiquitous alfvén pulses transporting energy from the photosphere to the upper chromosphere |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683129/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31383869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11495-0 |
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