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Register a new userMagnetic shuffling of coronal downdrafts
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Channelled fragmented downflows are ubiquitous in magnetized atmospheres, and have been recently addressed from an observation after a solar eruption. We study the possible back-effect of the magnetic field on the propagation of confined flows. We compare two 3D MHD simulations of dense supersonic plasma blobs downfalling along a coronal magnetic flux tube. In one, the blobs move strictly along the field lines; in the other, the initial velocity of the blobs is not perfectly aligned to the magnetic field and the field is weaker. The aligned blobs remain compact while flowing along the tube, with the generated shocks. The misaligned blobs are disrupted and merged by the chaotic shuffling of the field lines, and structured into thinner filaments; Alfven wave fronts are generated together with shocks ahead of the dense moving front. Downflowing plasma fragments can be chaotically and efficiently mixed if their motion is misaligned to field lines, with broad implications, e.g., disk accretion in protostars, coronal eruptions and rain.
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The evolution of a coronal loop is studied by means of numerical simulations of the fully compressible three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic equations using the HYPERION code. The footpoints of the loop magnetic field are advected by random motions. As a consequence the magnetic field in the loop is energized and develops turbulent nonlinear dynamics characterized by the continuous formation and dissipation of field-aligned current sheets: energy is deposited at small scales where heating occurs. Dissipation is non-uniformly distributed so that only a fraction of the coronal mass and volume gets heated at any time. Temperature and density are highly structured at scales which, in the solar corona, remain observationally unresolved: the plasma of our simulated loop is multi-thermal, where highly dynamical hotter and cooler plasma strands are scattered throughout the loop at sub-observational scales. Numerical simulations of coronal loops of 50000 km length and axial magnetic field intensities ranging from 0.01 to 0.04 Tesla are presented. To connect these simulations to observations we use the computed number densities and temperatures to synthesize the intensities expected in emission lines typically observed with the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on Hinode. These intensities are used to compute differential emission measure distributions using the Monte Carlo Markov Chain code, which are very similar to those derived from observations of solar active regions. We conclude that coronal heating is found to be strongly intermittent in space and time, with only small portions of the coronal loop being heated: in fact, at any given time, most of the corona is cooling down.
In recent work, Antiochos and coworkers argued that the boundary between the open and closed field regions on the Sun can be extremely complex with narrow corridors of open flux connecting seemingly disconnected coronal holes from the main polar holes, and that these corridors may be the sources of the slow solar wind. We examine, in detail, the topology of such magnetic configurations using an analytical source surface model that allows for analysis of the field with arbitrary resolution. Our analysis reveals three important new results: First, a coronal hole boundary can join stably to the separatrix boundary of a parasitic polarity region. Second, a single parasitic polarity region can produce multiple null points in the corona and, more important, separator lines connecting these points. It is known that such topologies are extremely favorable for magnetic reconnection, because they allow this process to occur over the entire length of the separators rather than being confined to a small region around the nulls. Finally, the coronal holes are not connected by an open-field corridor of finite width, but instead are linked by a singular line that coincides with the separatrix footprint of the parasitic polarity. We investigate how the topological features described above evolve in response to the motion of the parasitic polarity region. The implications of our results for the sources of the slow solar wind and for coronal and heliospheric observations are discussed.
Using extreme-ultraviolet images, we recently proposed a new and alternative formation mechanism for coronal rain along magnetically open field lines due to interchange magnetic reconnection. In this paper we report coronal rain at chromospheric and transition region temperatures originating from the coronal condensations facilitated by reconnection between open and closed coronal loops. For this, we employ the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Around 2013 October 19, a coronal rain along curved paths was recorded by IRIS over the southeastern solar limb. Related to this, we found reconnection between a system of higher-lying open features and lower-lying closed loops that occurs repeatedly in AIA images. In this process, the higher-lying features form magnetic dips. In response, two sets of newly reconnected loops appear and retract away from the reconnection region. In the dips, seven events of cooling and condensation of coronal plasma repeatedly occur due to thermal instability over several days, from October 18 to 20. The condensations flow downward to the surface as coronal rain, with a mean interval between condensations of 6.6 hr. In the cases where IRIS data were available we found the condensations to cool all the way down to chromospheric temperatures. Based on our observations we suggest that some of the coronal rain events observed at chromospheric temperatures could be explained by the new and alternative scenario for the formation of coronal rain, where the condensation is facilitated by interchange reconnection.
Employing Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) multi-wavelength images, we report the coronal condensation during the magnetic reconnection (MR) between a system of open and closed coronal loops. Higher-lying magnetically open structures, observed in AIA 171 A images above the solar limb, move downward and interact with the lower-lying closed loops, resulting in the formation of dips in the former. An X-type structure forms at the interface. The interacting loops reconnect and disappear. Two sets of newly-reconnected loops then form and recede from the MR region. During the MR process, bright emission appears sequentially in the AIA 131 A and 304 A channels repeatedly in the dips of higher-lying open structures. This indicates the cooling and condensation process of hotter plasma from ~0.9 MK down to ~0.6 MK, and then to ~0.05 MK, also supported by the light curves of the AIA 171 A, 131 A, and 304 A channels. The part of higher-lying open structures supporting the condensations participate in the successive MR. The condensations without support by underlying loops then rain back to the solar surface along the newly-reconnected loops. Our results suggest that the MR between coronal loops leads to the condensation of hotter coronal plasma and its downflows. MR thus plays an active role in the mass cycle of coronal plasma because it can initiate the catastrophic cooling and condensation. This underlines that the magnetic and thermal evolution has to be treated together and cannot be separated, even in the case of catastrophic cooling.
It is clear that the solar corona is being heated and that coronal magnetic fields undergo reconnection all the time. Here we attempt to show that these two facts are in fact related - i.e. coronal reconnection generates heat. This attempt must address the fact that topological change of field lines does not automatically generate heat. We present one case of flux emergence where we have measured the rate of coronal magnetic reconnection and the rate of energy dissipation in the corona. The ratio of these two, $P/dot{Phi}$, is a current comparable to the amount of current expected to flow along the boundary separating the emerged flux from the pre-existing flux overlying it. We can generalize this relation to the overall corona in quiet Sun or in active regions. Doing so yields estimates for the contribution to corona heating from magnetic reconnection. These estimated rates are comparable to the amount required to maintain the corona at its observed temperature.
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