New and advanced space-based observing facilities continue to lower the resolution limit and detect solar coronal loops in greater detail. We continue to discover even finer sub-structures within coronal loop cross sections, in order to understand the nature of the solar corona. Here, we push this lower limit further to search for the finest coronal loop sub-structures, through taking advantage of the resolving power of the Swedish 1- m Solar Telescope (SST) / CRisp Imaging Spectro-Polarimeter (CRISP), together with co-observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) / Atmospheric Image Assembly (AIA). High resolution imaging of the chromospheric H-alpha 656.28 nm spectral line core and wings can, under certain circumstances, allow one to deduce the topology of the local magnetic environment of the solar atmosphere where its observed. Here, we study post-flare coronal loops, which become filled with evaporated chromosphere that rapidly condenses into chromospheric clumps of plasma (detectable in H-alpha) known as a coronal rain, to investigate their fine-scale structure. We identify, through analysis of three datasets, large-scale catastrophic cooling in coronal loop-tops and the existence of multi-thermal, multi-stranded sub-structures. Many cool strands even extend fully-intact from loop-top to foot-point. We discover that coronal loop fine-scale strands can appear bunched with as many as 8 parallel strands, within an AIA coronal loop cross-section. The strand number density vs cross-sectional width distribution, as detected by CRISP within AIA-defined coronal loops, most-likely peaks at well below 100 km and currently 69% of the sub-structure strands are statistically unresolved in AIA coronal loops.
In this study we have compared coronal loops in the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) on-board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) with coronal loops from the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE). The purpose of which is to quantitatively and qualitatively examine the effects of spatial resolution on the width of coronal loops and implications for how a coronal loop is defined. Out of twenty-two loop sections analyzed, we find that none of them were resolved in EIT and none of them were close to the width of the TRACE loops. These findings suggest that coronal loo…
One puzzling observed property of coronal loops is that they are of roughly constant thickness along their length. Various studies have found no consistent pattern of width variation along the length of loops observed by TRACE and SOHO. This is at odds with expectations of magnetic flux tube expansion properties, which suggests that loops are widest at their tops, and significantly narrower at their footpoints. Coronal loops correspond to areas of the solar corona which have been preferentially heated by some process, so this observed property might be connected to the mechanisms that heat the…
Understanding the density structure of the solar corona is important for modeling both coronal heating and the solar wind. Direct measurements are difficult because of line-of-sight integration and possible unresolved structures. We present a new method for quantifying such structure using density-sensitive EUV line intensities to derive a density irregularity parameter, a relative measure of the amount of structure along the line of sight. We also present a simple model to relate the inferred irregularities to physical quantities, such as the filling factor and density contrast. For quiet Sun…
Despite decades of studying the Sun, the coronal heating problem remains unsolved. One fundamental issue is that we do not know the spatial scale of the coronal heating mechanism. At a spatial resolution of 1000 km or more it is likely that most observations represent superpositions of multiple unresolved structures. In this letter, we use a combination of spectroscopic data from the Hinode EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) and high resolution images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory to determine the spatial scales of coronal loops. We use density measu…
We use high-resolution images of the sun obtained by the SDO/AIA instrument to study the evolution of the coronal loops in a flaring solar active region. During 15 February 2011 a X-2.2 class flare occurred in NOAA 11158, a $βγδ$ sunspot complex. We identify three distinct phases of the coronal loop dynamics during this event: (i) {\it Slow rise phase}: slow rising motion of the loop-tops prior to the flare in response to slow rise of the underlying flux rope, (ii) {\it Collapse phase}: sudden contraction of the loop-tops with lower loops collapsing earlier than the higher loops, and (iii) {\i…
The transition region is a thin layer of the solar atmosphere that controls the energy loss from the solar corona. Large numbers of grid points are required to resolve this thin transition region fully in numerical modeling. In this study, we propose a new numerical treatment, called LTRAC, which can be easily extended to the multi-dimensional domains. We have tested the proposed method using a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model of a coronal loop in an active region. The LTRAC method enables modeling of the transition region with the numerical grid size of 50--100 km, which is about 1000 times…
Recent observations from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) have discovered a new class of numerous low-lying dynamic loop structures, and it has been argued that they are the long-postulated unresolved fine structures (UFS) that dominate the emission of the solar transition region. In this letter, we combine IRIS measurements of the properties of a sample of 108 UFS (intensities, lengths, widths, lifetimes) with 1-D non-equilibrium ionization simulations using the HYDRAD hydrodynamic model to examine whether the UFS are now truly spatially resolved in the sense of being individu…
Elemental Composition Evolution during the 2024 September 30 Solar Eruption: A Comparison of Hot and Cool Plasma Components with Solar Orbiter/SPICE, Hinode/EIS, and Chandrayaan-2/XSM
Southwest Research Institute（西南研究所）；Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校安与H.J.斯梅德航空航天工程科学系）；Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校大气与空间物理实验室）；University of Alabama in Huntsville（阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校）；NASA Marshall Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局马歇尔太空飞行中心）
The thermal structure of a coronal loop, both along and across the loop, is vital in determining the exact plasma heating mechanism. High resolution spectroscopic observations of the off-limb corona were made using 25 cm Norikura coronagraph, located at Norikura, Japan. Observations on a number of days, were made simultaneously in four forbidden iron emission lines namely, [Fe XI] 7892 Å line, [Fe XIII] 10747 Å& 10798 Å lines and [Fe XIV] 5303 Å line and on some days made only in [Fe XI] 7892 Å and [Fe X] 6374 Å lines. Using the temperature sensitive emission line ratios [Fe XIV] 5303 Å/[Fe XI…
Analysis of the solar coronal green line profiles reveals information regarding the physical conditions of the solar corona like temperature, density, Doppler velocity, non-thermal velocity etc. It provides insights to the unresolved problems like the coronal heating and the acceleration of the solar winds. Recent studies have reported excess blueshifts in the coronal line profiles and are interpreted as due to nanoflare heating, type II spicules and nascent solar wind flow. We have analyzed a time series of Fabry-Perot interferograms of the solar corona obtained during the total solar eclipse…
It was once thought that all coronal loops are in static equilibrium, but observational and modeling developments over the past decade have shown that this is clearly not the case. It is now established that warm (~1 MK) loops observed in the EUV are explainable as bundles of unresolved strands that are heated impulsively by storms of nanoflares. A raging debate concerning the multi-thermal versus isothermal nature of the loops can be reconciled in terms of the duration of the storm. We show that short and long storms produce narrow and broad thermal distributions, respectively. We also examin…
EUV observations of warm coronal loops suggest that they are bundles of unresolved strands that are heated impulsively to high temperatures by nanoflares. The plasma would then have the observed properties (e.g., excess density compared to static equilibrium) when it cools into the 1-2 MK range. If this interpretation is correct, then very hot emission should be present outside of proper flares. It is predicted to be vey faint, however. A critical element for proving or refuting this hypothesis is the existence of hot, very faint plasmas which should be at amounts predicted by impulsive heatin…
Low-lying loops have been discovered at the solar limb in transition region temperatures by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). They do not appear to reach coronal temperatures, and it has been suggested that they are the long-predicted unresolved fine structures (UFS). These loops are dynamic and believed to be visible during both heating and cooling phases. Making use of coordinated observations between IRIS and the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, we study how these loops impact the solar chromosphere. We show for the first time that there is indeed a chromospheric signal of these…
The origin of the solar wind is one of the most important unresolved prob- lems in space and solar physics. We report here the first spectroscopic signatures of the nascent fast solar wind on the basis of observations made by the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on Hinode in a polar coronal hole, in which patches of blueshift are clearly present on dopplergrams of coronal emission lines with a formation temperature of lg(T/K)=6.0. The corresponding upflow is associated with open field lines in the coronal hole, and seems to start in the solar transition region and becomes more prominent with inc…
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 ge…
The prominent blue shifts of Ne viii associated with the junctions of the magnetic network in the quiet Sun are still not well understood. By comparing the coronal magnetic-field structures as obtained by a potential-field reconstruction with the conspicuous blue-shift patches on the dopplergram of Ne viii as observed in an equatorial quiet-Sun region, we find that most of the regions with significant upflow are associated with the funnel-like legs of magnetic loops and co-spatial with increments of the line width. These quasi-steady upflows can be regarded as the signatures of mass supply to …
Coronal Magnetography using Spectropolarimetry with SKA Telescopes
National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research（塔塔基础研究院国家射电天体物理中心）；University Corporation for Atmospheric Research（大气研究大学联合会）；Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室）；Physical Research Laboratory（物理研究实验室）；KU Leuven（荷语鲁汶大学）
Radio-bright regions near the solar poles are frequently observed in Nobeyama Radioheliograph (NoRH) maps at 17 GHz, and often in association with coronal holes. However, the origin of these polar brightening has not been established yet. We propose that small magnetic loops are the source of these bright patches, and present modeling results that reproduce the main observational characteristics of the polar brightening within coronal holes at 17 GHz. The simulations were carried out by calculating the radio emission of the small loops, with several temperature and density profiles, within a 2…
Sunspots on the surface of the Sun are the observational signatures of intense manifestations of tightly packed magnetic field lines, with near-vertical field strengths exceeding 6,000 G in extreme cases. It is well accepted that both the plasma density and the magnitude of the magnetic field strength decrease rapidly away from the solar surface, making high-cadence coronal measurements through traditional Zeeman and Hanle effects difficult since the observational signatures are fraught with low-amplitude signals that can become swamped with instrumental noise. Magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) techn…
Shibata & Yokoyama (1999, 2002) proposed a method of estimating the coronal magnetic field strengths ($B$) and magnetic loop lengths ($L$) of solar and stellar flares, on the basis of magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the magnetic reconnection model. Using the scaling law provided by Shibata & Yokoyama (1999, 2002), $B$ and $L$ are obtained as functions of the emission measure ($EM=n^2L^3$) and temperature ($T$) at the flare peak. Here, $n$ is the coronal electron density of the flares. This scaling law enables the estimation of $B$ and $L$ for unresolved stellar flares from the observable ph…
Coronal loops interconnecting two active regions, called as interconnecting loops (ILs), are prominent large-scale structures in the solar atmosphere. They carry a significant amount of magnetic flux, therefore are considered to be an important element of the solar dynamo process. Earlier observations show that eruptions of ILs are an important source of CMEs. It is generally believed that ILs are formed through magnetic reconnection in the high corona (>150-200"), and several scenarios have been proposed to explain their brightening in soft X-rays (SXRs). Yet, the detailed IL formation proces…
We have expanded upon earlier work that investigates the relative importance of coronal loops with isothermal $versus$ multithermal cross-field temperature distributions. These results are important for determining if loops have substructure in the form of unresolved magnetic strands. We have increased the number of loops targeted for temperature analysis from 19 to 207 with the addition of 188 new loops from multiple regions. We selected all loop segments visible in the 171-Å images of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) that had a clean background. 86 of the new loops were rejected becaus…
In this study we analyze {\sl Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA)} and Hi-C images in order to investigate absolute limits for the finest loop strands. We develop a model of the occurrence-size distribution function of coronal loop widths, characterized by a lower limit of widths $w_{min}$, a peak width $w_p$, a peak occurrence number $n_p$, and a power law slope $a$. Our data analysis includes automated tracing of curvi-linear features with the OCCULT-2 code, automated sampling of the cross-sectional widths of coronal loops, and fitting of the theoretical size distribution to the observed dist…
The brightness of the emission from coronal loops in the solar atmosphere is strongly dependent on the temperature and density of the confined plasma. After a release of energy, these loops undergo a heating and upflow phase, followed by a cooling and downflow cycle. Throughout, there are significant variations in the properties of the coronal plasma. In particular, the increased coronal temperature leads to an excess downward heat flux that the transition region is unable to radiate. This generates an enthalpy flux from the transition region to the corona, increasing the coronal density. The …
Coronal loops in active regions are often characterized by quasi-circular and helically twisted (sigmoidal) geometries, which are consistent with dipolar potential field models in the former case, and with nonlinear force-free field models with vertical currents in the latter case. Alternatively, Parker-type nanoflare models of the solar corona hypothesize that a braiding mechanism operates between unresolved loop strands, which is a more complex topological model. In this study we use the vertical-current approximation of a nonpotential magnetic field solution (that fulfills the divergence-fr…
Standing sausage modes are important in interpreting quasi-periodic pulsations in the lightcurves of solar flares. Their periods and damping times play an important role in seismologically diagnosing key parameters like the magnetic field strength in regions where flare energy is released. Usually such applications are based on theoretical results neglecting unresolved fine structures in magnetized loops. However, the existence of fine structuring is suggested on both theoretical and observational grounds. Adopting the framework of cold magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), we model coronal loops as mag…
The heating of the outer solar atmospheric layers, i.e., the transition region and corona, to high temperatures is a long standing problem in solar (and stellar) physics. Solutions have been hampered by an incomplete understanding of the magnetically controlled structure of these regions. The high spatial and temporal resolution observations with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) at the solar limb reveal a plethora of short, low lying loops or loop segments at transition-region temperatures that vary rapidly, on the timescales of minutes. We argue that the existence of these loo…
Studying the statistical properties of solar ultraviolet emission lines could provide information about the nature of small scale coronal heating. We expand on previous work to investigate these properties. We study whether the predicted statistical distribution of ion emission line intensities produced by a specified heating function is affected by the isoelectronic sequence to which the ion belongs, as well as the characteristic temperature at which it was formed. Particular emphasis is placed on the strong resonance lines belonging to the lithium isoelectronic sequence. Predictions for emis…
We study the impulsively generated non-linear Alfvén waves in the solar atmosphere, and describe their most likely role in the observed non-thermal broadening of some spectral lines in solar coronal holes. We solve numerically the time-dependent magnetohydrodynamic equations to find temporal signatures of large-amplitude Alfvén waves in the model atmosphere of open and expanding magnetic field configuration, with a realistic temperature distribution. We calculate the temporally and spatially averaged, instantaneous transversal velocity of non-linear Alfvén waves at different heights of the mod…
Solar Soft X-ray Coronal Dimming in a Failed Eruption Associated with Plasma Cooling
Peking University（北京大学）；National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家空间科学中心）；Institute of Physics, University of Graz（格拉茨大学物理研究所）；Kanzelhöhe Observatory for Solar and Environmental Research, University of Graz（格拉茨大学坎泽勒霍厄太阳与环境研究天文台）；Yunnan University（云南大学）
It is largely agreed that many coronal loops---those observed at a temperature of about 1 MK--- are bundles of unresolved strands that are heated by storms of impulsive nanoflares. The nature of coronal heating in hotter loops and in the very important but largely ignored diffuse component of active regions is much less clear. Are these regions also heated impulsively, or is the heating quasi steady? The spectacular new data from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) telescopes on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) offer an excellent opportunity to address this question. We analyze the ligh…
Coronal loops in active regions are the subjects of intensive investigation, but the important diffuse 'unresolved' emission in which they are embedded has received relatively little attention. Here we measure the densities and emission measure (EM) distributions of a sample of background-foreground regions surrounding warm (2 MK) coronal loops, and introduce two new aspects to the analysis. First, we infer the EM distributions only from temperatures that contribute to the same background emission. Second, we measure the background emission co-spatially with the loops so that the results are t…
Solar flares form and release energy across a large number of magnetic loops. The global parameters of flares, such as the total energy released, duration, physical size, etc., are routinely measured, and the hydrodynamics of a coronal loop subjected to intense heating have been extensively studied. It is not clear, however, how many loops comprise a flare, nor how the total energy is partitioned between them. In this work, we employ a hydrodynamic model to better understand the energy partition by synthesizing Si IV and Fe XXI line emission and comparing to observations of these lines with IR…
The Wide-field Imager for Solar PRobe (WISPR) obtained the first high-resolution images of coronal rays at heights below 15 R$_\odot$ when the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) was located inside 0.25 au during the first encounter. We exploit these remarkable images to reveal the structure of coronal rays at scales that are not easily discernible in images taken from near 1 au. To analyze and interpret WISPR observations, which evolve rapidly both radially and longitudinally, we construct a latitude versus time map using the full WISPR dataset from the first encounter. From the exploitation of this map…
Heating of quiescent coronal loops caused by nearby eruptions observed with the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Solar Upper Transition Region Imager
Spectroscopic observations at extreme and far ultraviolet wavelengths have revealed systematic upflows in the solar transition region and corona. These upflows are best seen in the network structures of the quiet Sun and coronal holes, boundaries of active regions, and dimming regions associated with coronal mass ejections. They have been intensively studied in the past two decades because they are highly likely to be closely related to the formation of the solar wind and heating of the upper solar atmosphere. We present an overview of the characteristics of these upflows, introduce their poss…
Energetic Particle Acceleration and Transport: Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections and Shocks
National Observatory of Athens, IAASARS（雅典国家天文台）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学）；Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学天体物理科学系）；European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC)（欧洲空间局（ESA），欧洲空间天文中心（ESAC））；Universidad de Alcalá, Space Research Group (SRG-UAH)（阿尔卡拉大学，空间研究小组（SRG-UAH））；The Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学，应用物理实验室）；Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel（基尔大学实验与应用物理研究所）；National Key Laboratory of Deep Space Exploration/School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Technology and Science of China（中国科学技术大学深空探测全国重点实验室/地球与空间科学学院）；Institute of Physics, University of Graz（格拉茨大学物理研究所）；NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）；University of New Hampshire（新罕布什尔大学）；Southwest Research Institute（西南研究院）；CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学院比较行星学卓越创新中心，中国科学技术大学）
本综述利用多航天器多点多仪器观测，结合Solar Orbiter与Parker Solar Probe的近太阳高能粒子测量，研究行星际日冕物质抛射和激波对高能粒子加速与传输的作用，以解决相关未决问题。
Aims. The data set of the long-term XMM-Newton monitoring program of HD 81809 is analyzed to study its X-ray cycle, to investigate if the latter is related to the chromospheric one, to infer the structure of the corona of HD 81809, and to explore if the coronal activity of HD 81809 can be ascribed to phenomena similar to the solar ones and, therefore, considered an extension of the solar case. Methods. We analyze the observations of HD 81809 performed with XMM-Newton with a regular cadence of 6 months from 2001 to 2016 and representing one of the longest available observational baseline ($\sim…
The X-ray satellite XMM-Newton has so far revealed coronal cycles in seven solar-like stars. In this sample, the youngest stars $ε$ Eridani (400 Myr) and $ι$ Horologii (600 Myr) display the shortest X-ray cycles and the smallest cycle amplitudes. The corona of $ε$ Eridani was modelled in terms of solar magnetic structures (active regions, cores of active regions and flares) at varying filling factors. The study revealed that 65-95% of its corona is covered with magnetic structures, and this was held responsible for the low X-ray cycle amplitude. It was also hypothesized that the basal surface …
The nanoflare model of coronal heating is one of the most successful scenarios to explain, within a single framework, the diverse set of coronal observations available with the present instrument resolutions. The model is based on the idea that the coronal structure is formed by elementary magnetic strands which are tangled and twisted by the displacement of their photospheric footpoints by convective motions. These displacements inject magnetic stress between neighbor strands that promotes current sheet formation, reconnection, plasma heating, and possibly also particle acceleration. Among ot…
The 3D fine structure of the solar atmosphere is still not fully understood as most of the available observations are taken from a single vantage point. The goal of the paper is to study the 3D distribution of small-scale brightening events ("campfires") discovered in the EUV quiet Sun by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) aboard Solar Orbiter. We used a first commissioning data set acquired by the EUI's High Resolution EUV telescope on 30 May 2020 in the 174 Å passband and we combined it with simultaneous data taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard the Solar Dynamics Observa…
Throughout an activity cycle, magnetic structures rise to the stellar surface, evolve and decay. Tracing their evolution on a stellar corona allows us to characterize the X-ray cycles. However, directly mapping magnetic structures is feasible only for the Sun, while such structures are spatially unresolved with present-day X-ray instruments on stellar coronae. We present here a new method, implemented by us, that indirectly reproduces the stellar X-ray spectrum and its variability with solar magnetic structures. The technique converts solar corona observations into a format identical to that o…
The acceleration of the solar coronal plasma to supersonic speeds is one of the most fundamental yet unresolved problem in heliophysics. Despite the success of Parker's pioneering theory on an isothermal solar corona, the realistic solar wind is observed to be non-isothermal, and the decay of its temperature with radial distance usually can be fitted to a polytropic model. In this work, we use Parker Solar Probe data from the first nine encounters to estimate the polytropic index of solar wind protons. The estimated polytropic index varies roughly between 1.25 and 1.5 and depends strongly on s…
This paper investigates a quiescent (non-flaring) active region observed on July 13, 2010 in EUV, SXR, and HXRs to search for a hot component that is speculated to be a key signature of coronal heating. We use a combination of RHESSI imaging and long-duration time integration (up to 40 min) to detect the active regions in the 3-8 keV range during apparently non-flaring times. The RHESSI imaging reveals a hot component that originates from the entire active region, as speculated for a nanoflare scenario where the entire active region is filled with a large number of unresolved small energy rele…
Sunspots are of basic interest in the study of the Sun. Their relevance ranges from them being an activity indicator of magnetic fields to being the place where coronal mass ejections and flares erupt. They are therefore also an important ingredient of space weather. Their formation, however, is still an unresolved problem in solar physics. Observations utilize just 2D surface information near the spot, but it is debatable how to infer deep structures and properties from local helioseismology. For a long time, it was believed that flux tubes rising from the bottom of the convection zone are th…
We examine 172 Ang ultra-high-resolution images of a solar plage region from the Hi-C 2.1 ("Hi-C") rocket flight of 2018 May 29. Over its five-minute flight, Hi-C resolves a plethora of small-scale dynamic features that appear near noise level in concurrent Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) 171 Ang images. For ten selected events, comparisons with AIA images at other wavelengths and with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) images indicate that these features are cool (compared to the corona) ejections. Combining Hi-C 172 Ang, AIA 171 Ang, IRIS 140…
