Statistical analysis of intermittency and its association with proton heating in the near Sun environment
Nikos Sioulas, Marco Velli, Rohit Chhiber, Loukas Vlahos, William H. Matthaeus, Riddhi Bandyopadhyay, Manuel E. Cuesta, Chen Shi, Trevor A. Bowen, Ramiz A. Quds… 展开作者
Nikos Sioulas, Marco Velli, Rohit Chhiber, Loukas Vlahos, William H. Matthaeus, Riddhi Bandyopadhyay, Manuel E. Cuesta, Chen Shi, Trevor A. Bowen, Ramiz A. Qudsi, Michael L. Stevens, Stuart D. Bale
We use data from the first six encounters of Parker Solar Probe and employ the Partial Variance of Increments ($PVI$) method to study the statistical properties of coherent structures in the inner heliosphere with the aim of exploring physical connections between magnetic field intermittency and observable consequences such as plasma heating and turbulence dissipation. Our results support proton heating localized in the vicinity of, and strongly correlated with, magnetic structures characterized by $PVI \geq 1$. We show that on average, such events constitute $\approx 19\%$ of the dataset, though variations may occur depending on the plasma parameters. We show that the waiting time distribution ($WT$) of identified events is consistent across all six encounters following a power-law scaling at lower $WTs$. This result indicates that coherent structures are not evenly distributed in the solar wind but rather tend to be tightly correlated and form clusters. We observe that the strongest magnetic discontinuities, $PVI \geq 6$, usually associated with reconnection exhausts, are sites where magnetic energy is locally dissipated in proton heating and are associated with the most abrupt changes in proton temperature. However, due to the scarcity of such events, their relative contribution to energy dissipation is minor. Taking clustering effects into consideration, we show that smaller scale, more frequent structures with PVI between, $1\lesssim PVI \lesssim 6$, play the major role in magnetic energy dissipation. The number density of such events is strongly associated with the global solar wind temperature, with denser intervals being associated with higher $T_{p}$.
Several studies in the near-Earth environment show that intermittent structures are important sites of energy dissipation and particle energization. Recent Parker Solar Probe (PSP) data, sampled in the near-Sun environment, have shown that proton heating is concentrated near coherent structures, suggesting local heating of protons by turbulent cascade in this region. However, whether electrons exhibit similar behavior in the near-Sun environment is not clear. Here, we address this question using PSP data collected near the Sun during the first seven orbits. We use the partial variance of incre…
Intermittency of heating in weakly collisional plasma turbulence is an active subject of research, with significant potential impact on understanding of the solar wind, solar corona and astrophysical plasmas. Recent studies suggest a role of vorticity in plasma heating. In magnetohydrodynamics small scale vorticity is generated near current sheets and this effect persists in kinetic plasma, as demonstrated here with hybrid and fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations. Furthermore, vorticity enhances local kinetic effects, with a generalized resonance condition selecting sign-dependent …
High time-resolution solar wind magnetic field data is employed to study statistics describing intermittency near the first perihelion (~35.6 Rs) of the Parker Solar Probe mission. A merged dataset employing two instruments on the FIELDS suite enables broadband estimation of higher order moments of magnetic field increments, with five orders established with reliable accuracy. The duration, cadence, and low noise level of the data permit evaluation of scale dependence of the observed intermittency from the inertial range to deep subproton scales. The results support multifractal scaling in the…
We present the multifractal study of the intermittency of the magnetic field turbulence in the fast and slow solar wind beyond the ecliptic plane during two solar minima (1997-1998, 2007-2008) and solar maximum (1999-2001). More precisely, we consider 126 time intervals of Ulysses magnetic field measurements, obtain the multifractal spectra, and examine the degree of multifractality as the measure of intermittency in the MHD range of scales, for a wide range of heliocentric distances and heliolatitudes. The results show a slow decrease of intermittency with the radial distance, which is more s…
In solar wind, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) discontinuities are ubiquitous and often found to be at the origin of turbulence intermittency. They may also play a key role in the turbulence dissipation and heating of the solar wind. The tangential (TD) and rotational (RD) discontinuities are the two most important types of discontinuities. Recently, the connection between turbulence intermittency and proton thermodynamics has been being investigated observationally. Here we present numerical results from three-dimensional MHD simulation with pressure anisotropy and define new methods to identify an…
Energy dissipation in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is known to be highly intermittent in space, being concentrated in sheet-like coherent structures. Much less is known about intermittency in time, another fundamental aspect of turbulence which has great importance for observations of solar flares and other space/astrophysical phenomena. In this Letter, we investigate the temporal intermittency of energy dissipation in numerical simulations of MHD turbulence. We consider four-dimensional spatiotemporal structures, "flare events", responsible for a large fraction of the energy dissipati…
In the lower solar coronal regions where the magnetic field is dominant, the Alfven speed is much higher than the wind speed. In contrast, the near-Earth solar wind is strongly super-Alfvenic, i.e., the wind speed greatly exceeds the Alfven speed. The transition between these regimes is classically described as the "Alfven point" but may in fact occur in a distributed Alfven critical region. NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission has entered this region, as it follows a series of orbits that gradually approach more closely to the sun. During its 8th and 9th solar encounters, at a distance of …
The extreme temperatures and non-thermal nature of the solar corona and solar wind arise from an unidentified physical mechanism that preferentially heats certain ion species relative to others. Spectroscopic indicators of unequal temperatures commence within a fraction of a solar radius above the surface of the Sun, but the outer reach of this mechanism has yet to be determined. Here we present an empirical procedure for combining interplanetary solar wind measurements and a modeled energy equation including Coulomb relaxation to solve for the typical outer boundary of this zone of preferenti…
It is generally believed that sunspots are the emergent part of magnetic flux tubes in the solar interior. These tubes are created at the base of the convection zone and rise to the surface due to their magnetic buoyancy. The motion of plasma in the convection zone being highly turbulent, the surface manifestation of sunspots may retain the signature of this turbulence, including its intermittency. From direct observations of sunspots, and indirect observations of the concentration of cosmogenic isotopes $^{14}$C in tree rings or $^{10}$Be in polar ice, power spectral densities in frequency ar…
We study the radial evolution of intermittency of density fluctuations in the fast solar wind. The study is performed analyzing the plasma density measurements provided by Helios 2 in the inner heliosphere between $0.3$ and $0.9$ AU. The analysis is carried out by means of a complete set of diagnostic tools, including the flatness factor at different time scales to estimate intermittency, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to estimate the degree of intermittency, and the Fourier transform to estimate the power spectral densities of these fluctuations. Density fluctuations within fast wind are rather …
We examine statistics of magnetic field vector components to explore how intermittency evolves from near sun plasma to radial distances as large as 10 au. Statistics entering the analysis include auto-correlation, magnetic structure functions of order n (SFn), and scale dependent kurtosis (SDK), each grouped in ranges of heliocentric distance. The Goddard Space Flight Center Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) provides magnetic field measurements for resolutions of 6.8ms for Parker Solar Probe, 6s for Helios, and 1.92s for Voyager 1. We compute SF2 to determine the scales encompassing the inert…
We investigate how the proton distribution function evolves when the protons undergo stochastic heating by strong, low-frequency, Alfvén-wave turbulence under the assumption that $β$ is small. We apply our analysis to protons undergoing stochastic heating in the supersonic fast solar wind and obtain proton distributions at heliocentric distances ranging from 4 to 30 solar radii. We find that the proton distribution develops non-Gaussian structure with a flat core and steep tail. For $r >5 \ R_{\rm S}$, the proton distribution is well approximated by a modified Moyal distribution. Comparisons w…
Stochastic heating is a non-linear heating mechanism driven by the violation of magnetic moment invariance due to large-amplitude turbulent fluctuations producing diffusion of ions towards higher kinetic energies in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field. It is frequently invoked as a mechanism responsible for the heating of ions in the solar wind. Here, we quantify for the first time the proton stochastic heating rate $Q_\perp$ at radial distances from the Sun as close as $0.16$ au, using measurements from the first two Parker Solar Probe encounters. Our results for both the amplit…
The Sun and sun-like stars commonly host the multi-million-Kelvin coronae and the 10,000-Kelvin chromospheres. These extremely hot gases generate X-ray and Extreme Ultraviolet emissions that may impact the erosion and chemistry of (exo)planetary atmospheres, influencing the climate and conditions of habitability. However, the mechanism of coronal and chromospheric heating is still poorly understood. While the magnetic field most probably plays a key role in driving and transporting energy from the stellar surface upwards, it is not clear if the atmospheric heating mechanisms of the Sun and act…
The quiet solar corona consists of myriads of loop-like features, with magnetic fields originating from network and internetwork regions on the solar surface. The continuous interaction between these different magnetic patches leads to transient brightenings or bursts that might contribute to the heating of the solar atmosphere. However, it remains unclear whether such transients, which are mostly observed in the EUV, play a significant role in atmospheric heating. We revisit the open question of these bursts as a prelude to the new high-resolution EUV imagery expected from the recently launch…
The solar wind undergoes significant heating as it propagates away from the Sun; the exact mechanisms responsible for this heating remain unclear. Using data from the first perihelion of the Parker Solar Probe mission, we examine the properties of proton and electron heating occurring within magnetic coherent structures identified by means of the Partial Variance of Increments (PVI) method. Statistically, regions of space with strong gradients in the magnetic field, $PVI \geq 1$, are associated with strongly enhanced proton but only slightly elevated electron temperatures. Our analysis indicat…
Magnetic reconnection in the quiet Sun is a phenomenon that is consistently observed, and it has recently become feasible to simulate via 3D numerical models of realistically stratified and convection-driven reconnection. We aim to illustrate ways by which quiet Sun fields may contribute to solar atmospheric heating via magnetic reconnection that is driven by convective motion. We also aim to compare our stratified model to earlier idealized coronal models in terms of reconnection drivers and topological conditions. We analyzed a simulation of the quiet Sun in which a complex coronal magnetic …
Magnetohydronamic turbulence is believed to play a crucial role in heating the laboratorial, space, and astrophysical plasmas. However, the precise connection between the turbulent fluctuations and the particle kinetics has not yet been established. Here we present clear evidence of plasma turbulence heating based on diagnosed wave features and proton velocity distributions from solar wind measurements by the Wind spacecraft. For the first time, we can report the simultaneous observation of counter-propagating magnetohydrodynamic waves in the solar wind turbulence. Different from the tradition…
\textbf{Purpose:} This paper addresses long-standing solar physics problems, namely, the heating of the solar chromosphere and the origin of the solar wind. Our aim is to reveal the related mechanisms behind chromospheric heating and plasma outflows in a quiet-Sun. \textbf{Methods:} The approach is based on a two-fluid numerical model that accounts for thermal non-equilibrium (ionization/recombination), non-adiabatic, and non-ideal dynamics of protons+electrons and hydrogen atoms. The model is applied to numerically simulate the propagation and dissipation of granulation-generated waves in the…
The heating of the solar chromosphere remains one of the most important questions in solar physics. Our current understanding is that small-scale internetwork (IN) magnetic fields play an important role as a heating agent. Indeed, cancellations of IN magnetic elements in the photosphere can produce transient brightenings in the chromosphere and transition region. These bright structures might be the signature of energy release and plasma heating, probably driven by magnetic reconnection of IN field lines. Although single events are not expected to release large amounts of energy, their global …
Geological evidence suggests liquid water near the Earth's surface as early as 4.4 billion years ago when the faint young Sun only radiated about 70% of its modern power output. At this point, the Earth should have been a global snowball if it possessed atmospheric properties similar to those of the modern Earth. An extreme atmospheric greenhouse effect, an initially more massive Sun, release of heat acquired during the accretion process of protoplanetary material, and radioactivity of the early Earth material have been proposed as reservoirs or traps for heat. For now, the faint-young-sun par…
The solar coronal heating in quiet Sun (QS) and coronal holes (CH), including solar wind formation, are intimately tied by magnetic field dynamics. Thus, a detailed comparative study of these regions is needed to understand the underlying physical processes. CHs are known to have subdued intensity and larger blueshifts in the corona. This work investigates the similarities and differences between CHs and QS in the chromosphere using the Mg II h & k, C II lines, and transition region using Si IV line, for regions with identical absolute magnetic flux density (|B|). We find CHs to have subdued i…
We have performed a 2.5 dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulation that resolves the propagation and dissipation of Alfven waves in the solar atmosphere. Alfvenic fluctuations are introduced on the bottom boundary of the extremely large simulation box that ranges from the photosphere to far above the solar wind acceleration region. Our model is ab initio in the sense that no corona and no wind are assumed initially.The numerical experiment reveals the quasi-steady solution that has the transition from the cool to the hot atmosphere and the emergence of the high speed wind. The global structure…
The question how the outer solar atmosphere is heated from solar photospheric temperatures of about 5800K up to solar chromospheric and coronal temperatures of about 20.000K and millions of degrees respectively, remained without any satisfying answer for centuries. On 4 May 2005, I recorded several time series of Halpha line scans with the GREGOR Fabry-Perot Interferometer, still deployed at the German Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT), for different solar limb and on-disk positions as well as for quiet sun at solar disk center. The spatially and temporally highly resolved time series of Halpha lin…
Increasing evidence for coronal heating contributions from cooler solar atmospheric layers, notably quiet Sun (QS) conditions, challenges standard solar atmospheric descriptions of bright transition region (TR) emission. As such, questions to the role of dynamic QS transients in contributing to the total coronal energy budget are elevated. Using observations from the {\it Atmospheric Imaging Assembly} and {\it Heliosemic Magnetic Imager} on board the {\it Solar Dynamics Observatory}, and numerical model extrapolations of coronal magnetic fields, we investigate a dynamic QS transient energetica…
We have measured the energy and dissipation of Alfvenic waves in the quiet Sun. A magnetic field was used to infer the location and orientation of the magnetic field lines along which the waves are expected to travel. The waves were measured using spectral lines to infer the wave amplitude. The waves cause a non-thermal broadening of the spectral lines, which can be expressed as a non-thermal velocity v_nt. By combining the spectroscopic measurements with this magnetic field model we were able to trace the variation of v_nt along the magnetic field. At the footpoints of the quiet Sun loops we …
Magnetic Heating Across the Sun and Solar-like Stars: Universal Scaling Laws from Chromospheres to Coronae
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency（宇宙航空研究开发机构太空科学研究所）；The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University（京都大学哈库比高级研究中心）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局戈达德航天飞行中心）；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）；National Solar Observatory（美国国家太阳天文台）；Department of Applied Physics, Interdisciplinary Faculty of Science and Engineering, Shimane University（岛根大学理工融合学部应用物理系）；American University（美国大学）
Rapid Blue- and Red-shifted Excursions (RBEs and RREs) are likely to be the on-disk counterparts of Type II spicules. Recently, heating signatures from RBEs/RREs have been detected in IRIS slit-jaw images dominated by transition-region lines around network patches. Additionally, signatures of Type II spicules have been observed in AIA diagnostics. The full-disk, ever-present nature of the AIA diagnostics should provide us with sufficient statistics to directly determine how important RBEs and RREs are to the heating of the transition region and corona. We find, with high statistical significan…
Recent observations suggest that magnetic flux cancellation may play a crucial role in heating the Sun's upper atmosphere (chromosphere, transition region, corona). Here, we intended to validate an analytic model for magnetic reconnection and consequent coronal heating, driven by a pair of converging and cancelling magnetic flux sources of opposite polarities. For this test, we analyzed photospheric magnetic field and multi-wavelength UV/EUV observations of a small-scale flux cancellation event in a quiet-Sun internetwork region over a target interval of 5.2 hr. The observed cancellation event…
Context: Resistive Ohmic dissipation has been suggested as a mechanism for heating the solar chromosphere, but few studies have established this association. Aim: We aim to determine how Ohmic dissipation by electric currents can heat the solar chromosphere. Methods: We combine high-resolution spectroscopic Ca II data from the Dunn Solar Telescope and vector magnetic field observations from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) to investigate thermal enhancements in a sunspot light bridge. The photospheric magnetic field from HMI was extrapolated to the corona using a non-force-free field…
Coronal holes (CHs) are darker than quiet Sun (QS) when observed in coronal channels. This study aims to understand the similarities and differences between CHs and QS in the transition region using the \ion{Si}{4}~1394~Å line recorded by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) by considering the distribution of magnetic field measured by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We find that \ion{Si}{4} intensities obtained in CHs are lower than those obtained in QS for regions with identical magnetic flux densities. Moreover, the differ…
The explanation of the coronal heating problem potentially lies in the existence of nanoflares, numerous small-scale heating events occuring across the whole solar disk. In this paper, we present the first imaging spectroscopy X-ray observations of three quiet Sun flares during the NuSTAR solar campaigns on 2016 July 26 and 2017 March 21, concurrent with SDO/AIA observations. Two of the three events showed time lags of a few minutes between peak X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emissions. Isothermal fits with rather low temperatures in the range $3.2-4.1$ MK and emission measures of $(0.6-1…
The origins of the hot solar corona and the supersonically expanding solar wind are still the subject of debate. A key obstacle in the way of producing realistic simulations of the Sun-heliosphere system is the lack of a physically motivated way of specifying the coronal heating rate. Recent one-dimensional models have been found to reproduce many observed features of the solar wind by assuming the energy comes from Alfven waves that are partially reflected, then dissipated by magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. However, the nonlocal physics of wave reflection has made it difficult to apply these …
Sunspot light bridges (LBs) exhibit a wide range of short-lived phenomena in the chromosphere and transition region. In contrast, we use here data from the Multi-Application Solar Telescope (MAST), the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), Hinode, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), and the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) to analyze the sustained heating over days in an LB in a regular sunspot. Chromospheric temperatures were retrieved from the the MAST Ca II and IRIS Mg II lines by nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium inversions. Line widths, Doppler shifts, and intensities w…
Solar Wind Heating Near the Sun: A Radial Evolution Approach
University of Iowa（爱荷华大学）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；The Catholic University of America（天主教美国大学）；Tel Aviv University（特拉维夫大学）；Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学月球与行星实验室）；Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室）；Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute, University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩分校戈达德行星日球物理学研究所）；Georgia State University（佐治亚州立大学）；Centre for Space Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee（印度鲁尔凯技术学院空间科学与技术中心）
Turbulence develops in any stressed flow when the scales of the forcing are much larger than those of the dissipation. In neutral fluids, it consists of chaotic motions in physical space but with a universal energy spectrum in Fourier space. Intermittency (non-Gaussian statistics of fluctuations) is another general property and it is related to the presence of coherent structures. Space plasmas are turbulent as well. Here, we focus on the kinetic plasma scales, which are not yet well understood. We address the following fundamental questions: (1) Do the turbulent fluctuations at kinetic scales…
Shocks, compressible perturbations, and intermittency in the very local interstellar medium: Voyager 1 and 2 observations and numerical modeling
University of Alabama in Huntsville（亨茨维尔阿拉巴马大学）；Manipal University Jaipur（斋浦尔马匹阿尔大学）；Leonard F. Burlaga, Inc.（伦纳德·F·伯尔加公司）；Space Research Center PAS (CBK PAN)（波兰科学院空间研究中心）
Various remote sensing observations have been used so far to probe the turbulent properties of the solar wind. Using the recently reported density modulation indices that are derived using angular broadening observations of Crab Nebula during 1952 - 2013, we measured the solar wind proton heating using the kinetic $\rm Alfv\acute{e}n$ wave dispersion equation. The estimated heating rates vary from $\approx 1.58 \times 10^{-14}$ to $1.01 \times 10^{-8} ~\rm erg~ cm^{-3}~ s^{-1}$ in the heliocentric distance range 5 - 45 $\rm R_{\odot}$. Further, we found that heating rates vary with the solar c…
In the solar atmosphere, Alfvén waves are believed to play an important role in the transfer of energy from the photosphere to the corona and solar wind, and in the heating of the chromosphere. We perform numerical computations to investigate energy transport and dissipation associated with torsional Alfvén waves propagating in magnetic flux tubes that expand from the photosphere to the corona in quiet-Sun conditions. We place a broadband driver at the photosphere that injects a wave energy flux of $10^7$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ and consider Ohm's magnetic diffusion and ion-neutral collisions a…
Solar events, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares, heat up the upper atmosphere and near-Earth space environment. Due to this heating and expansion of the outer atmosphere by the energetic ultraviolet, X-ray and particles expelled from the sun, the low Earth-Orbiting satellites (LEOS) become vulnerable to an enhanced drag force by the ions and molecules of the expanded atmosphere. Out of various types of perturbations, Earth directed CMEs play the most significant role. They are more frequent and intense during the active (solar maximum) phase of the sun's approximately 11-y…
Recurrent Coronal Jets and QPPs: Periodic Reconnection and Localized Heating Across Quiet-Sun to Active Regions
Astronomical Observatory, Kyoto University（京都大学天文观测所）；Key Laboratory of Solar Activity and Space Weather, School of Aerospace, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen（哈尔滨工业大学（深圳）航天学院太阳活动与空间天气重点实验室）；Division of Mathematics, School of Science and Engineering, University of Dundee（邓迪大学科学与工程学部数学系）；Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi（瓦拉纳西印度技术学院（贝拿勒斯 Hindu 大学）物理系）
UV bursts and Ellerman bombs are transient brightenings observed in the low solar atmospheres of emerging flux regions. Observations have discovered the cospatial and cotemporal EBs and UV bursts, and their formation mechanisms are still not clear. The multi-thermal components with a large temperature span in these events challenge our understanding of magnetic reconnection and heating mechanisms in the low solar atmosphere. We have studied magnetic reconnection between the emerging and background magnetic fields. The initial plasma parameters are based on the C7 atmosphere model. After the cu…
It is shown that the holographic principle of quantum gravity (in the hologram of the Universe, and therefore in our Galaxy, and of course on the Sun!), in which the conflict between the theory of gravitation and quantum mechanics disappears, gives rise to the Babcock-Leighton holographic mechanism. Unlike the solar dynamo models, it generates a strong toroidal magnetic field by means of the thermomagnetic Ettingshausen-Nernst (EN) effect in the tachocline. Hence, it can be shown that with the help of the thermomagnetic EN effect, a simple estimate of the magnetic pressure of an ideal gas in t…
The formation of extremely hot outer atmospheres is one of the most prominent manifestations of magnetic activity common to the late-type dwarf stars, including the Sun. It is widely believed that these atmospheric layers, the corona, transition region, and chromosphere, are heated by the dissipation of energy transported upwards from the stellar surface by the magnetic field. This is signified by the spectral line fluxes at various wavelengths, scaled with power-law relationships against the surface magnetic flux over a wide range of formation temperatures, which are universal to the Sun and …
