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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...

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Autores principales: Liu, Jiajia, Nelson, Chris J., Snow, Ben, Wang, Yuming, Erdélyi, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
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.
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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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