TY - JOUR
T1 - Weak damping of propagating MHD kink waves in the quiescent corona
AU - Morton, Richard J.
AU - Tiwari, Ajay K.
AU - Van Doorsselaere, Tom
AU - McLaughlin, James A.
N1 - Funding information: R.J.M. is supported by a UKRI Future Leader Fellowship (RiPSAW - MR/T019891/1), and thanks R. Soler and I. Arregui for providing comments on a draft of the manuscript. A.K.T is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824064 (ESCAPE). T.V.D. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 724326) and the C1 grant TRACEspace of Internal Funds KU Leuven. J.A.M. is supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) via grant number ST/T000384/1. The authors also acknowledge STFC via grant number ST/L006243/1 and for IDL support. The CoMP data is courtesy of the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, operated by the High Altitude Observatory, as part of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). NCAR is supported by the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Propagating transverse waves are thought to be a key transporter of Poynting flux throughout the Sun’s atmosphere. Recent studies have shown that these transverse motions, interpreted as the magnetohydrodynamic kink mode, are prevalent throughout the corona. The associated energy estimates suggest the waves carry enough energy to meet the demands of the coronal radiative losses in the quiescent Sun. However, it is still unclear how the waves deposit their energy into the coronal plasma. We present the results from a large-scale study of propagating kink waves in the quiescent corona using data from the Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter (CoMP). The analysis reveals that the kink waves appear to be weakly damped, which would imply low rates of energy transfer from the largescale transverse motions to smaller-scales via either uni turbulence or resonant absorption. This raises questions about how the observed kink modes would deposit their energy into the coronal plasma. Moreover, these observations, combined with the results of Monte Carlo simulations, lead us to infer that the solar corona displays a spectrum of density ratios, with a smaller density ratio (relative to the ambient corona) in quiescent coronal loops and a higher density ratio in active region coronal loops.
AB - Propagating transverse waves are thought to be a key transporter of Poynting flux throughout the Sun’s atmosphere. Recent studies have shown that these transverse motions, interpreted as the magnetohydrodynamic kink mode, are prevalent throughout the corona. The associated energy estimates suggest the waves carry enough energy to meet the demands of the coronal radiative losses in the quiescent Sun. However, it is still unclear how the waves deposit their energy into the coronal plasma. We present the results from a large-scale study of propagating kink waves in the quiescent corona using data from the Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter (CoMP). The analysis reveals that the kink waves appear to be weakly damped, which would imply low rates of energy transfer from the largescale transverse motions to smaller-scales via either uni turbulence or resonant absorption. This raises questions about how the observed kink modes would deposit their energy into the coronal plasma. Moreover, these observations, combined with the results of Monte Carlo simulations, lead us to infer that the solar corona displays a spectrum of density ratios, with a smaller density ratio (relative to the ambient corona) in quiescent coronal loops and a higher density ratio in active region coronal loops.
KW - Sun: corona
KW - waves
KW - magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ac324d
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ac324d
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 923
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 225
ER -