Issue |
A&A
Volume 696, April 2025
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A3 | |
Number of page(s) | 16 | |
Section | The Sun and the Heliosphere | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202453355 | |
Published online | 28 March 2025 |
High flow speeds and transition-region-like temperatures in the solar chromosphere during flux emergence
Evidence from imaging spectropolarimetry in He I 1083 nm and numerical simulations
1
Institute for Solar Physics, Dept. of Astronomy, Stockholm University, AlbaNova University Centre, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
2
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
3
Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1029 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway
4
Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1029 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway
⋆ Corresponding author; jorrit.leenaarts@astro.su.se
Received:
9
December
2024
Accepted:
3
March
2025
Context. Flux emergence in the solar atmosphere is a complex process that causes a release of magnetic energy as heat and acceleration of solar plasma on a variety of spatial scales.
Aims. We aim to investigate temperatures and velocities in small-scale reconnection episodes during flux emergence.
Methods. We analyzed imaging spectropolarimetric data taken in the He I 1083 nm line with a spatial resolution of 0.26″, a time cadence of 2.8 s, and a spectral range corresponding to ±220 km s−1 around the line. This line is sensitive to temperatures higher than 15 kK, unlike diagnostics such as Mg II h&k, Ca II H&K, and Hα, which lose sensitivity already at 15 kK. The He I data is complemented by imaging spectropolarimetry in the Fe I 617.3 nm and Ca II 854.2 nm lines and imaging spectroscopy in Ca II K and Hα at a cadence between 12 s and 36 s. We employed inversions to determine the magnetic field and vertical velocity in the solar atmosphere. We computed He I 1083 nm profiles from a radiation-magneto-hydrodynamics simulation of the solar atmosphere to help in the interpretation of the observations.
Results. We find fast-evolving blob-like emission features in the He I 1083 nm triplet at locations where the magnetic field is rapidly changing direction, and these are likely sites of magnetic reconnection. We fit the line with a model consisting of an emitting layer located below a cold layer representing the fibril canopy. The modeling provides evidence that this model, while simple, catches the essential characteristics of the line formation. The morphology of the emission in the He I 1083 nm is localized and blob-like, unlike the emission in the Ca II K line, which is more filamentary.
Conclusions. The modeling shows that the He I 1083 nm emission features and their Doppler shifts can be caused by opposite-polarity reconnection and/or horizontal current sheets below the canopy layer in the chromosphere. Based on the high observed Doppler width and the blob-like appearance of the emission features, we conjecture that at least a fraction of them are produced by plasmoids. We conclude that transition-region-like temperatures in the deeper layers of the active region chromosphere are more common than previously thought.
Key words: magnetic reconnection / Sun: chromosphere / Sun: magnetic fields
© The Authors 2025
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.