scholarly journals Mode Coupling in the Solar Corona. III. Alfvén and Magnetoacoustic Waves

1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 495 ◽  
Author(s):  
DB Melrose

Coupling between Alfven waves and fast mode waves obliquely incident on a stratified medium is treated using the method of Clemmow and Heading (1954) within the framework of the cold plasma approximation. A result due to Frisch (1964) is rederived in the special case of vertical incidence. The coupling is strongest for nearly parallel (to the magnetic field lines) propagation, and the coupling ratio may be approximated by Q = (00 /0)" where 0 is the angle between the wave vector and the magnetic field lines, while og = A/L, with A the wavelength and L the scalelength of the inhomogeneity. This result may be of significance in connection with the heating of the solar corona by the dissipation of waves generated initially as acoustic waves in the photosphere, and perhaps with the propagation of hydromagnetic waves in the interplanetary medium.

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-102
Author(s):  
G.E. Brueckner

The crucial role of magnetic fields in any mechanism to heat the outer solar atmosphere has been generally accepted by all authors. However, there is still no agreement about the detailed function of the magnetic field. Heating mechanisms can be divided up into 4 classes: (I) The magnetic field plays a passive role as a suitable medium for the propagation of Alfvén waves from the convection zone into the corona (Ionson, 1984). (II) In closed magnetic structures the slow random shuffling of field lines by convective motions below the surface induces electric currents in the corona which heat it by Joule dissipation (Heyvaerts and Priest, 1984). (Ill) Emerging flux which is generated in the convection zone reacts with ionized material while magnetic field lines move through the chromosphere, transition zone and corona. Rapid field line annihilation, reconnection and drift currents result in heating and material ejection (Brueckner, 1987; Brueckner et al., 1987; Cook et al., 1987). (IV) Acoustic waves which could heat the corona can be guided by magnetic fields. Temperature distribution, wave motions and shock formation are highly dependent on the geometry of the flux tubes (Ulmschneider and Muchmore, 1986; Ulmschneider, Muchmore and Kalkofen, 1987).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Nisticò ◽  
Valery M. Nakariakov ◽  
Timothy Duckenfield ◽  
Miloslav Druckmüller ◽  
Gaetano Zimbardo

<p>Space telescopes of the SoHO, STEREO and SDO missions have occasionally acquired observations of comets, providing an interesting opportunity to investigate the structure and dynamics of the heliospheric plasma.  Cometary plasma tails exhibit a wave-like motion, which is believed to be a response to the physical conditions of the local interplanetary medium. Furthermore, sungrazing comets diving in the solar atmosphere provide us with an unprecedented way to diagnose the coronal plasma at distances which are unaccessible from the current spacecraft. Here, we present observations of Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 from SDO/AIA, which was seen to cross the EUV solar corona in December 2011. The cometary ions produced by the sublimation of the comet nucleus were channelled along the magnetic field lines forming some filamented structures. Such structures appear to show small amplitude kink oscillations, which are used to determine the magnitude of the coronal magnetic field by coronal seismology.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 621 ◽  
pp. A43 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Felipe ◽  
C. Kuckein ◽  
E. Khomenko ◽  
I. Thaler

Context. Solar active regions show a wide variety of oscillatory phenomena. The presence of the magnetic field leads to the appearance of several wave modes whose behavior is determined by the sunspot thermal and magnetic structure. Aims. We aim to study the relation between the umbral and penumbral waves observed at the high photosphere and the magnetic field topology of the sunspot. Methods. Observations of the sunspot in active region NOAA 12662 obtained with the GREGOR telescope (Observatorio del Teide, Tenerife, Spain) were acquired on 2017 June 17. The data set includes a temporal series in the Fe I 5435 Å line obtained with the imaging spectrograph GREGOR Fabry-Pérot Interferometer (GFPI) and a spectropolarimetric raster map acquired with the GREGOR Infrared Spectrograph (GRIS) in the 10 830 Å spectral region. The Doppler velocity deduced from the restored Fe I 5435 Å line has been determined, and the magnetic field vector of the sunspot has been inferred from spectropolarimetric inversions of the Ca I 10 839 Å and the Si I 10 827 Å lines. Results. A two-armed spiral wavefront has been identified in the evolution of the two-dimensional velocity maps from the Fe I 5435 Å line. The wavefronts initially move counterclockwise in the interior of the umbra, and develop into radially outward propagating running penumbral waves when they reach the umbra-penumbra boundary. The horizontal propagation of the wavefronts approximately follows the direction of the magnetic field, which shows changes in the magnetic twist with height and horizontal position. Conclusions. The spiral wavefronts are interpreted as the visual pattern of slow magnetoacoustic waves which propagate upward along magnetic field lines. Their apparent horizontal propagation is due to their sequential arrival to different horizontal positions at the formation height of the Fe I 5435 Å line, as given by the inclination and orientation of the magnetic field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Elbarmi ◽  
Wrick Sengupta ◽  
Harold Weitzner

Understanding particle drifts in a non-symmetric magnetic field is of primary interest in designing optimized stellarators in order to minimize the neoclassical radial loss of particles. Quasisymmetry and omnigeneity, two distinct properties proposed to ensure radial localization of collisionless trapped particles in stellarators, have been explored almost exclusively for magnetic fields with nested flux surfaces. In this work, we examine radial particle confinement when all field lines are closed. We then study charged particle dynamics in the special case of a non-symmetric vacuum magnetic field with closed field lines obtained recently by Weitzner & Sengupta (Phys. Plasmas, vol. 27, 2020, 022509). These magnetic fields can be used to construct magnetohydrodynamic equilibria for low pressure. Expanding in the amplitude of the non-symmetric fields, we explicitly evaluate the omnigeneity and quasisymmetry constraints. We show that the magnetic field is omnigeneous in the sense that the drift surfaces coincide with the pressure surfaces. However, it is not quasisymmetric according to the standard definitions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Elder ◽  
Allen H. Boozer

The prominence of nulls in reconnection theory is due to the expected singular current density and the indeterminacy of field lines at a magnetic null. Electron inertia changes the implications of both features. Magnetic field lines are distinguishable only when their distance of closest approach exceeds a distance $\varDelta _d$ . Electron inertia ensures $\varDelta _d\gtrsim c/\omega _{pe}$ . The lines that lie within a magnetic flux tube of radius $\varDelta _d$ at the place where the field strength $B$ is strongest are fundamentally indistinguishable. If the tube, somewhere along its length, encloses a point where $B=0$ vanishes, then distinguishable lines come no closer to the null than $\approx (a^2c/\omega _{pe})^{1/3}$ , where $a$ is a characteristic spatial scale of the magnetic field. The behaviour of the magnetic field lines in the presence of nulls is studied for a dipole embedded in a spatially constant magnetic field. In addition to the implications of distinguishability, a constraint on the current density at a null is obtained, and the time required for thin current sheets to arise is derived.


1971 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 329-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Vrabec

Zeeman spectroheliograms of photospheric magnetic fields (longitudinal component) in the CaI 6102.7 Å line are being obtained with the new 61-cm vacuum solar telescope and spectroheliograph, using the Leighton technique. The structure of the magnetic field network appears identical to the bright photospheric network visible in the cores of many Fraunhofer lines and in CN spectroheliograms, with the exception that polarities are distinguished. This supports the evolving concept that solar magnetic fields outside of sunspots exist in small concentrations of essentially vertically oriented field, roughly clumped to form a network imbedded in the otherwise field-free photosphere. A timelapse spectroheliogram movie sequence spanning 6 hr revealed changes in the magnetic fields, including a systematic outward streaming of small magnetic knots of both polarities within annular areas surrounding several sunspots. The photospheric magnetic fields and a series of filtergrams taken at various wavelengths in the Hα profile starting in the far wing are intercompared in an effort to demonstrate that the dark strands of arch filament systems (AFS) and fibrils map magnetic field lines in the chromosphere. An example of an active region in which the magnetic fields assume a distinct spiral structure is presented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 502 (1) ◽  
pp. 1263-1278
Author(s):  
Richard Kooij ◽  
Asger Grønnow ◽  
Filippo Fraternali

ABSTRACT The large temperature difference between cold gas clouds around galaxies and the hot haloes that they are moving through suggests that thermal conduction could play an important role in the circumgalactic medium. However, thermal conduction in the presence of a magnetic field is highly anisotropic, being strongly suppressed in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field lines. This is commonly modelled by using a simple prescription that assumes that thermal conduction is isotropic at a certain efficiency f < 1, but its precise value is largely unconstrained. We investigate the efficiency of thermal conduction by comparing the evolution of 3D hydrodynamical (HD) simulations of cold clouds moving through a hot medium, using artificially suppressed isotropic thermal conduction (with f), against 3D magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations with (true) anisotropic thermal conduction. Our main diagnostic is the time evolution of the amount of cold gas in conditions representative of the lower (close to the disc) circumgalactic medium of a Milky-Way-like galaxy. We find that in almost every HD and MHD run, the amount of cold gas increases with time, indicating that hot gas condensation is an important phenomenon that can contribute to gas accretion on to galaxies. For the most realistic orientations of the magnetic field with respect to the cloud motion we find that f is in the range 0.03–0.15. Thermal conduction is thus always highly suppressed, but its effect on the cloud evolution is generally not negligible.


1977 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. F. Cramer

The parametric excitation of slow, intermediate (Alfvén) and fast magneto-acoustic waves by a modulated spatially non-uniform magnetic field in a plasma with a finite ratio of gas pressure to magnetic pressure is considered. The waves are excited in pairs, either pairs of the same mode, or a pair of different modes. The growth rates of the instabilities are calculated and compared with the known result for the Alfvén wave in a zero gas pressure plasma. The only waves that are found not to be excited are the slow plus fast wave pair, and the intermediate plus slow or fast wave pair (unless the waves have a component of propagation direction perpendicular to both the background magnetic field and the direction of non-uniformity of the field).


2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory G. Howes ◽  
Sofiane Bourouaine

Plasma turbulence occurs ubiquitously in space and astrophysical plasmas, mediating the nonlinear transfer of energy from large-scale electromagnetic fields and plasma flows to small scales at which the energy may be ultimately converted to plasma heat. But plasma turbulence also generically leads to a tangling of the magnetic field that threads through the plasma. The resulting wander of the magnetic field lines may significantly impact a number of important physical processes, including the propagation of cosmic rays and energetic particles, confinement in magnetic fusion devices and the fundamental processes of turbulence, magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration. The various potential impacts of magnetic field line wander are reviewed in detail, and a number of important theoretical considerations are identified that may influence the development and saturation of magnetic field line wander in astrophysical plasma turbulence. The results of nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence of sub-ion length scales are evaluated to understand the development and saturation of the turbulent magnetic energy spectrum and of the magnetic field line wander. It is found that turbulent space and astrophysical plasmas are generally expected to contain a stochastic magnetic field due to the tangling of the field by strong plasma turbulence. Future work will explore how the saturated magnetic field line wander varies as a function of the amplitude of the plasma turbulence and the ratio of the thermal to magnetic pressure, known as the plasma beta.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. D. M. Walker ◽  
G. J. Sofko

Abstract. When studying magnetospheric convection, it is often necessary to map the steady-state electric field, measured at some point on a magnetic field line, to a magnetically conjugate point in the other hemisphere, or the equatorial plane, or at the position of a satellite. Such mapping is relatively easy in a dipole field although the appropriate formulae are not easily accessible. They are derived and reviewed here with some examples. It is not possible to derive such formulae in more realistic geomagnetic field models. A new method is described in this paper for accurate mapping of electric fields along field lines, which can be used for any field model in which the magnetic field and its spatial derivatives can be computed. From the spatial derivatives of the magnetic field three first order differential equations are derived for the components of the normalized element of separation of two closely spaced field lines. These can be integrated along with the magnetic field tracing equations and Faraday's law used to obtain the electric field as a function of distance measured along the magnetic field line. The method is tested in a simple model consisting of a dipole field plus a magnetotail model. The method is shown to be accurate, convenient, and suitable for use with more realistic geomagnetic field models.


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