Search Results
Combining magneto-hydrostatic constraints with Stokes profiles inversions: III. Uncertainty in the inference of electric currents
2023, Borrero, J.M., Pastor Yabar, A.
Electric currents play an important role in the energy balance of the plasma in the solar atmosphere. They are also indicative of non-potential magnetic fields and magnetic reconnection. Unfortunately, the direct measuring of electric currents has traditionally been riddled with inaccuracies. Aims. We study how accurately we can infer electric currents under different scenarios. Methods. We carry out increasingly complex inversions of the radiative transfer equation for polarized light applied to Stokes profiles synthesized from radiative three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The inversion yields the magnetic field vector. B. from which the electric current density, ./, is derived by applying Ampere's law. Results. We find that the retrieval of the electric current density is only slightly affected by photon noise or spectral resolution. However, the retrieval steadily improves as the Stokes inversion becomes increasingly elaborated. In the least complex case (a Milne- Eddington-like inversion applied to a single spectral region), it is possible to determine the individual components of the electric current density (jx, jy, jz) with an accuracy of cr = 0.90 - l.OOdex, whereas the modulus (|[/
The solar photospheric silicon abundance according to CO5BOLD: Investigating line broadening, magnetic fields, and model effects
2022, Deshmukh, S.A., Ludwig, H.-G., Kučinskas, A., Steffen, M., Barklem, P.S., Caffau, E., Dobrovolskas, V., Bonifacio, P.
Context. In this work, we present a photospheric solar silicon abundance derived using CO5BOLD model atmospheres and the LINFOR3D spectral synthesis code. Previous works have differed in their choice of a spectral line sample and model atmosphere as well as their treatment of observational material, and the solar silicon abundance has undergone a downward revision in recent years. We additionally show the effects of the chosen line sample, broadening due to velocity fields, collisional broadening, model spatial resolution, and magnetic fields. Aims. Our main aim is to derive the photospheric solar silicon abundance using updated oscillator strengths and to mitigate model shortcomings such as over-broadening of synthetic spectra. We also aim to investigate the effects of different line samples, fitting configurations, and magnetic fields on the fitted abundance and broadening values. Methods. CO5BOLD model atmospheres for the Sun were used in conjunction with the LINFOR3D spectral synthesis code to generate model spectra, which were then fit to observations in the Hamburg solar atlas. We took pixel-to-pixel signal correlations into account by means of a correlated noise model. The choice of line sample is crucial to determining abundances, and we present a sample of 11 carefully selected lines (from an initial choice of 39 lines) in both the optical and infrared, which has been made possible with newly determined oscillator strengths for the majority of these lines. Our final sample includes seven optical Si i lines, three infrared Si i lines, and one optical Si ii line. Results. We derived a photospheric solar silicon abundance of log ϵSi = 7.57 ± 0.04, including a - 0.01 dex correction from Non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (NLTE) effects. Combining this with meteoritic abundances and previously determined photospheric abundances results in a metal mass fraction Z/X = 0.0220 ± 0.0020. We found a tendency of obtaining overly broad synthetic lines. We mitigated the impact of this by devising a de-broadening procedure. The over-broadening of synthetic lines does not substantially affect the abundance determined in the end. It is primarily the line selection that affects the final fitted abundance.
Large-scale globally propagating coronal waves
2015, Warmuth, Alexander
Large-scale, globally propagating wave-like disturbances have been observed in the solar chromosphere and by inference in the corona since the 1960s. However, detailed analysis of these phenomena has only been conducted since the late 1990s. This was prompted by the availability of high-cadence coronal imaging data from numerous spaced-based instruments, which routinely show spectacular globally propagating bright fronts. Coronal waves, as these perturbations are usually referred to, have now been observed in a wide range of spectral channels, yielding a wealth of information. Many findings have supported the “classical” interpretation of the disturbances: fast-mode MHD waves or shocks that are propagating in the solar corona. However, observations that seemed inconsistent with this picture have stimulated the development of alternative models in which “pseudo waves” are generated by magnetic reconfiguration in the framework of an expanding coronal mass ejection. This has resulted in a vigorous debate on the physical nature of these disturbances. This review focuses on demonstrating how the numerous observational findings of the last one and a half decades can be used to constrain our models of large-scale coronal waves, and how a coherent physical understanding of these disturbances is finally emerging.