Mushrooms in the Solar Corona

In the solar atmosphere a new phenomenon is discovered, namely, the formation, growth, and disappearance of mushrooms as a consequence of eruptive processes. This phenomenon gives an insight into many geometric and physical properties of coronal mass ejections (CME).     

The Absolute Abundance of Iron in the Solar Corona

We present a measurement of the abundance of Fe relative to H in the solar corona using a technique that differs from previous spectroscopic and solar wind measurements. Our method combines EUV line data from the Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (CDS) on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory with thermal bremsstrahlung radio data from the VLA. The coronal Fe abundance is derived by equating the thermal bremsstrahlung radio emission calculated from the EUV Fe line data to that observed with the VLA, treating the Fe/H abundance as the sole unknown. We apply this technique to a compact cool active region and find Fe&solm0;H=1.56x10-4, or about 4 times its value in the solar photosphere. Uncertainties in the CDS radiometric calibration, the VLA intensity measurements, the atomic parameters, and the assumptions made in the spectral analysis yield net uncertainties of approximately 20%. This result implies that low first ionization potential elements such as Fe are enhanced in the solar corona relative to photospheric values.     

Element Abundances in Solar Energetic Particles and the Solar Corona

This is a study of abundances of the elements He, C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe in solar energetic particles (SEPs) in the 2?–?15 MeV?amu^?1 region measured on the Wind spacecraft during 54 large SEP events occurring between November 1994 and June 2012. The origin of most of the temporal and spatial variations in abundances of the heavier elements lies in rigidity-dependent scattering during transport of the particles away from the site of acceleration at shock waves driven out from the Sun by coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Variation in the abundance of Fe is correlated with the Fe spectral index, as expected from scattering theory but not previously noted. Clustering of Fe abundances during the “reservoir” period, late in SEP events, is also newly reported. Transport-induced enhancements in one region are balanced by depletions in another, thus, averaging over these variations produces SEP abundances that are energy independent, confirms previous SEP abundances in this energy region, and provides a credible measure of element abundances in the solar corona. These SEP-determined coronal abundances differ from those in the solar photosphere by a well-known function that depends upon the first ionization potential (FIP) or ionization time of the element.     

Heating Events in the Quiet Solar Corona

Sensitive observations of the quiet Sun observed by EIT on the SOHO satellite in high-temperature iron-line emission originating in the corona are presented. The thermal radiation of the quiet corona is found to fluctutate significantly, even on the shortest time scale of 2 min and in the faintest pixels. The power spectrum of the emission measure time variations is approximately a power law with an exponent of 1.79±0.08 for the brightest pixels and 1.69±0.08 for the average and the faintest pixels. The more prominent enhancements are identified with previously reported X-ray network flares (Krucker et al., 1997) above the magnetic network of the quiet chromosphere. In coronal EUV iron lines they are amenable to detailed analysis suggesting that the brightenings are caused by additional plasma injected from below and heated to slightly higher temperature than the preexisting corona. Statistical investigations are consistent with the hypothesis that the weaker emission measure enhancements originate from the same parent population. The power input derived from the impulsive brightenings is linearly proportional to the radiative loss in the observed part of the corona. The absolute amount of impulsive input is model-dependent. It cannot be excluded that it can satisfy the total requirement for heating. These observations give strong evidence that a significant fraction of the heating in quiet coronal regions is impulsive.     

The Extended Solar Cycle Tracked High into the Corona

We present observations of the extended solar cycle activity in white-light coronagraphs, and compare them with the more familiar features seen in the Fe?xiv green-line corona. We show that the coronal activity zones seen in the emission corona can be tracked high into the corona. The peak latitude of the activity, which occurs near solar maximum, is found to be very similar at all heights. But we find that the equatorward drift of the activity zones is faster at greater heights, and that during the declining phase of the solar cycle, the lower branch of activity (that associated with the current cycle) disappears at about 3R _??. This implies that during the declining phase of the cycle, the solar wind detected near Earth is likely to be dominated by the next cycle. The so-called ??rush to the poles?? is also seen in the higher corona. In the higher corona it is found to start at a similar time but at lower latitudes than in the green-line corona. The structure is found to be similar to that of the equatorward drift.     

On Rotation of the Solar Corona

We have studied the rotation of the solar corona using the images taken at a 9.4?nm wavelength by the AIA 094 instrument on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite. Our analysis implies that the solar corona rotates differentially. It appears that ??, the angular rotation velocity of the solar corona, does not only depend on heliographic latitude but is also a function of time, while the nature of the latter dependence remains unclear. Besides measurement errors, deviations ???? from the mean rotational speed are also caused by proper motion of the observed point source (the tracer) with respect to its surroundings. The spread in ?? values at a particular heliographic latitude is a real effect, not caused by measurement errors. Most of the observations carry relative error less than 1?% in???.     

Cyclotron Heating of the Solar Corona

A physical model of the solar transition region and corona is presented, in which plasma flows in rapidly-diverging coronal funnels and holes are described within the framework of a two-fluid model including wave-particle interactions. The ions are heated by wave dissipation and accelerated by the pressure gradient of high-frequency Alfvén waves, which are assumed to originate at the bottom of the magnetic network by small-scale reconnection. The heating is assumed to be due to cyclotron-resonant damping of the waves near the local ion gyrofrequency. The EUV emission lines observed by the SUMER spectrometer on SOHO show very strong broadenings, which seem to be ordered according to the ion charge-per-mass ratio and thus to indicate cyclotron-resonant heating by waves. Based on quasilinear theory, a closure scheme for anisotropic multi-component fluid equations is developed for the wave-particle interactions of the ions with Alfvén waves. The acceleration and heating rates are calculated. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Flattening Index of the Solar Corona and the Solar Cycle

The photometrical flattening index of the solar corona a+b is defined according to Ludendorff. In this paper we have investigated how the flattening index varies with respect to the phase of solar activity and the sunspot number. We have compiled 170 values of the flattening index using the data on 60 total solar eclipses from 1851 to 2010. We have found that the flattening index takes values from 0 to 0.4, and is anticorrelated with solar activity. The value of the flattening index at the beginning of solar cycle 24 was used as a precursor to forecast the amplitude of the cycle. It was found that the amplitude of solar cycle 24 will be about 95 in terms of the smoothed monthly sunspot numbers.     

Stability of Current Sheets in the Solar Corona

This work aims at investigating unstable modes of oscillation of quasi-vertical two-dimensional current sheets with sheared magnetic fields under physical conditions typical for the solar corona. We use linear magnetohydrodynamic equations to obtain sets of unstable modes related to the longitudinal inhomogeneity of the current sheet. It is shown that these modes of current sheet oscillations can modulate the current sheet thickness along the polarity inversion line. Based on the obtained results, we propose a scenario which can naturally explain both the quasi-periodic pulsations of hard X-ray emission and the parallel movement of their double footpoint-like sources along the polarity inversion line observed in some eruptive two-ribbon solar flares.     

Electromagnetic Ion Beam Instability in the Solar Corona

Remote-sensing measurements indicate that heavy ions in the corona undergo an anisotropic and mass-charge dependent energization.A popular explanation to this phenomenon is the damping of the Alfven/ion cyclotron waves.In this paper,we propose that the ion beam instability can be an important source of the Alfven/ion cyclotron waves, and we study the excitation of the ion beam instability in the corona at the heliocentric distance～3R_⊙ and the corresponding energy transfer process ther...     

The Magnetic Field of the Solar Corona from Pulsar Observations

We present a novel experiment with the capacity to independently measure both the electron density and the magnetic field of the solar corona. We achieve this through measurement of the excess Faraday rotation resulting from propagation of the polarised emission from a number of pulsars through the magnetic field of the solar corona. This method yields independent measures of the integrated electron density, via dispersion of the pulsed signal and the magnetic field, via the amount of Faraday rotation. In principle this allows the determination of the integrated magnetic field through the solar corona along many lines of sight without any assumptions regarding the electron density distribution. We present a detection of an increase in the rotation measure of the pulsar J1801-2304 of approximately 170 rad m² at an elongation of 0.96° from the centre of the solar disc. This corresponds to a lower limit of the magnetic field strength along this line of sight of >41.8 nT. The lack of precision in the integrated electron density measurement restricts this result to a limit, but application of coronal plasma models can further constrain this to approximately 0.5 μT, along a path passing 2.7 solar radii from the solar limb, which is consistent with predictions obtained using extensions to the source surface models published by the Wilcox Solar Observatory.     

Dynamic Three-Dimensional Tomography of the Solar Corona

Empirical, three-dimensional electron-density maps of the solar corona can be tomographically reconstructed using polarized-brightness images measured from ground- and space-based observatories. Current methods for computing these reconstructions require the assumption that the structure of the corona is unchanging with time. We present the first global reconstructions that do away with this static assumption and, as a result, allow for a more accurate empirical determination of the dynamic solar corona. We compare the new dynamic reconstructions of the coronal density during February 2008 to a sequence of static reconstructions. We find that the new dynamic reconstructions are less prone to certain computational artifacts that may plague the static reconstructions. In addition, these benefits come without a significant increase in computational cost.     

Heating the Solar Corona by Magnetic Reconnection

Here I review briefly the theory of magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and ask what observational evidence is there that it is heating the corona. In particular, the new directions in which three-dimensional theory for reconnection is heading are outlined. Part of the coronal heating problem has been solved with the identification of reconnection driven by converging flux motions as the key for x-ray bright points. Furthermore, it has been shown that the large-scale diffuse corona is heated rather uniformly, so that turbulent reconnection by braiding or ion-cyclotron waves driven by network micro-flares are prime candidates. Finally, reconnection is the natural explanation for a wide variety of phenomena discovered by SOHO including explosive events, blinkers, the magnetic carpet and even possibly tornadoes. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Evidence for two maxima of activity in the 20th solar cycle

Analysis of the 5303 Å coronal line intensity and of the sunspot activity during the period 1962–1970 confirms the existence of two distinct maxima of solar activity, in accordance with the previous findings of Gnevyshev for the period 1954–1960.     

Properties of Ion-Cyclotron Waves in the Open Solar Corona

Remote observations of coronal holes have strongly suggested the resonant interactions of ion-cyclotron waves with ions as a principal mechanism for plasma heating and acceleration of the fast solar wind. In order to study these waves, a WKB (Wentzel?CKramers?CBrillouin) linear perturbation analysis is used in the frame work of a collisionless multi-fluid model where we consider in addition to protons a second ion component made of alpha particles. We consider a non-uniform background plasma describing a funnel region in the open coronal holes and we use the ray tracing Hamiltonian-type equations to compute the ray path of the waves and the spatial variation of their properties. At low frequency (smaller than the proton cyclotron frequency), the results showed a distinct behavior of the two ion-cyclotron modes found in our calculations, namely the first one propagates anisotropically guided along the magnetic field lines while the second one propagates isotropically with no preferred direction.     

Subtelescopic Inhomogeneities of Electron Density in the Solar Corona

The brightness of the solar corona due to Thomson scattering depends linearly on the electron density, while the brightness due to the Balmer continuum is proportional to its square. As a consequence, information on the distribution of the electron density in the corona can be obtained by comparing the radial profiles of the surface brightness in both continua. This idea was explored for the first time in the solar eclipse of November 03, 1994, in Foz do Iguaçu, PR, Brazil. Pictures of the corona were obtained with interference filters, one centered at 477 nm (Thomson continuum) and another one at 347 nm (Balmer continuum). The second filter also transmits the Thomson continuum through its spectral window, so that the Balmer images contain Thomson contamination. This paper reports on the observational results and presents their preliminary analysis. It was found that in certain radial directions, the normalized profiles of both continua (Thomson and contaminated Balmer) coincide, but in other directions they differ significantly. The non-coincident profiles may only occur if Balmer emission becomes important in relation to the Thomson scattering. A simple calculation shows that in such cases the electron density in the inner corona must exceed the values of standard models by up to 6.1 × 10⁴ times, maintaining however the total number of electrons along the line of sight in agreement with the prediction of standard models. It is concluded that the corona contains high electron concentration in cloudlets of subtelescopic sizes down to 10⁶ cm. The varied behavior of the radial profiles of both continua in different radial directions, suggests that the subtelescopic structures might be related to the spatially variable topology of coronal magnetic flux tubes.     

日冕中无衰减振荡的研究进展

日冕中冕环的无衰减横向振荡(简称无衰减振荡)自2012年被发现以来,受到了广泛的关注.无衰减振荡具有在日冕中广泛存在以及振幅无明显变小的特性,使之在解释日冕加热和冕震学诊断上都具有相当的潜力.总结了日冕中无衰减振荡的研究进展,包括观测研究得到的一系列结果、提出的理论和数值模型以及基于无衰减振荡进行冕震学诊断的一些尝试,并且展望了未来可以进一步开展的研究.     

High-resolution Observations of Plasma Jets in the Solar Corona

We present recent observations of coronal jets, made by TRACE and Yohkoh/SXT on 28 May and 19 August 1998. The high spatial resolution of TRACE enables us to see in detail the process of material ejection; in the line of Fe ix (one million degrees) we see both bright emitting material and dark absorbing/scattering material being ejected, i.e., both hot and cold material, highly collimated and apparently ejected along the direction of the overlying field lines. Bright ejecta are seen simultaneously in Lyman α for one event and Yohkoh/SXT in the other. The jets on the two days are different in that the 19 August jet displays the morphology typical of a one-sided anemone jet while the 28 May jet exhibits a two-sided jet morphology. The 19 August jet shows evidence for rotation and an interesting bifurcation at large distances from the energy release site. We study the physical properties and energetics of these jetting events, and conclude that existing theoretical models capture the essential physics of the jet phenomena. Supplementary material to this paper is available in electronic form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1005213826793