A&A 404, L1-L4 (2003)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20030763
D. B. King1 - V. M. Nakariakov1 - E. E. Deluca2 - L. Golub2 - K. G. McClements3
1 - Physics Department,
University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
2 -
Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA02138, USA
3 -
UKAEA Culham Division, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 3DB, USA
Received 23 January 2003 / Accepted 19 March 2003
Abstract
Quasi-periodic EUV disturbances simultaneously observed in 171 Å and 195 Å TRACE bandpasses propagating outwardly in a fan-like
magnetic structure of a coronal active region are analysed.
Time series of disturbances observed in the different bandpasses
have a relatively high
correlation coefficient (up to about 0.7). The correlation has a
tendency to decrease with distance along the structure: this is
consistent with an interpretation of the disturbances in terms of
parallel-propagating slow magnetoacoustic waves. The wavelet
analysis does not show a significant
difference between waves observed in different bandpasses.
Periodic patterns of two distinct periods: 2-3 min and 5-8 min are
detected in both bandpasses, existing simultaneously and at the
same distance along the loop, suggesting the nonlinear generation
of the second harmonics.
Key words: magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)- waves - Sun: activity - Sun: corona - Sun: oscillations - Sun: UV radiation
Quasi-periodic disturbances of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) emission, propagating along coronal loops, were discovered by Berghmans & Clette (1999) using the SOHO/EIT instrument. The same phenomenon is believed to have been observed with the TRACE telescope by Nightingale et al. (1999), De Moortel et al. (2000), Berghmans et al. (2001).
Very recently, De Moortel et al. (2002a-c) have studied 38 TRACE examples of this phenomenon and found that the EUV propagating disturbances are often positioned over sunspots. Typically, the disturbances propagate outwards from the sunspot, along the fan-like magnetic structure, at an almost constant speed of about 25-165 km s-1. The amplitude of the emission intensity perturbations is usually less than 12% of the background. The characteristic periods are several hundred seconds (180-600 s). Similar periodicities have recently been observed in the coronal green line (Sakurai et al. 2002). According to De Moortel et al. (2002a-c), shorter period disturbances are usually observed over the sunspots, while longer period disturbances normally propagate along loops which are not associated with sunspots. No manifestation of downward propagation has been found. There is no correlation between the amplitudes, periods and speeds (Nakariakov et al. 2002).
Nakariakov et al. (2000) and Tsiklauri & Nakariakov (2001) developed a model interpreting the EUV propagating disturbances in terms of slow magnetoacoustic waves. Wave propagation in the model is restricted to the magnetic field direction: this is consistent with the fact that the observed disturbances appear to follow diverging magnetic field lines. Slow waves of the observed periodicities (shorter than 20 min) can propagate without reflection in the 1.0 MK corona, as the acoustic cut-off period is about 70 min. According to the model, the waves propagate at about the sound speed in the loop. The observed speed of the waves is reduced by line-of-sight effects.
The first study of propagating EUV disturbances observed simultaneously in the 171 Å bandpass using TRACE and the 195 Å bandpass using SOHO/EIT was undertaken by Robbrecht et al. (2001). This investigation showed that the disturbances observed in the different bandpasses by the two telescopes were poorly correlated and that the speeds of the disturbances in 195 Å corresponding to the hotter temperature, were systematically faster than those observed in the cooler 171 Å bandpass (although the difference in speeds was less than the observational uncertainties in each). In this paper we analyse observations from July 2 1998, when quasi-periodic disturbances were simultaneously observed in the 171 Å and 195 Å bandpasses by the same imaging telescope, TRACE.
On July 2 1998 TRACE observed the on-disk active region AR8253 in the 171 Å and 195 Å bandpasses. A part of the active region with a typical fan-like set of diverging coronal loops is shown in the left panel of Fig. 1. The observation cadence time in both bandpasses was 31 s, and the delay time between observations in 195 Å and 171 Å was 11 s. After 06:01 UT, for about an hour, in both EUV bandpasses outwardly propagating disturances of the emission intensity were clearly observed. The waves were observed to begin near the origin of the magnetic fan and spread out up to 10 Mm. The intensities measured in both bandpasses, along the same chosen path (Fig. 1, right panel), were taken at different instants of time and laid side-by-side to form time-distance maps (see DeForest & Gurman 1998 for description of the method). Figure 2 shows a time-distance map constructed for slit A, with distance from the origin shown in opposite directions. A typical "fishbone'' structure can be clearly seen, suggesting that the propagating disturbances observed in different bandpasses are highly correlated.
The diagonal stripes of EUV brightness correspond to propagating
EUV disturbances. As in the case of all previous observations of
this phenomenon, the disturbances are seen to propagate outwardly.
The speed of the disturbances was found by fitting the distance
variation to a sinuosoidal function and locating the maximum. Such
maxima are found for each frame and then plotted against the time
of each frame. The gradient of this plot gives the velocity
component of the disturbances transverse to the line of sight as
about 25-40 km s-1. The temperatures associated with the 171 Å and 195 Å TRACE bandpasses are 1.0 and 1.6 MK,
respectively, which correspond to the sound speeds of 152 km s-1 and 192 km s-1. Assuming the angle between the line
of sight (LOS) and the wave vector to be 10-15,
we obtain
propagation speeds of the observed propagating disturbances of 150-190 km s-1. The disturbances are observed to be
quasi-periodic, with the characteristic period of several min.
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Figure 3:
Six upper panels: evolution of correlation coefficients of propagating
disturbances observed simultaneously in 171 Å and 195 Å bandpasses with the distance along six different slits (see
Fig. 1). The solid lines show the correlation of
unfiltered data and the dashed lines - the correlation of the
signals after subtraction of slower variation. The dotted lines
are the best-fitted straight lines. Two lower panels:
evolution of correlation coefficients of simulated signals. The
left shows the correlation for the same angle with the line of
sight, but for different temperatures
T171=1.05, 1.15 and 1.2 MK and
T195=1.55, 1.55
and 1.45 MK for the solid, dotted and the dashed line respectively. The right
panel shows varying angle
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The time-distance maps in Fig. 2 appear to be very
similar for the two bandpasses, indicating a high correlation
between the propagating disturbances. To quantify this, we
performed a correlation analysis of EUV disturbances observed in
the two bandpasses propagating along the same slit. For each pixel
along a slit, we obtained two time series describing the evolution
of the EUV emission intensity and computed the correlation
coefficient
of these time series (for a precise
definition of
,
see e.g. Kendall & Stuart 1961). The
dependence of the correlation coefficient
on the pixel
position along the slit is shown in Fig. 3. The
correlation is quite high for all slits analysed. In five out of
six cases studied
decreases systematically with
distance along the slit.
The high correlation can be caused by low-period components of the spectrum. To exclude this possibility, we calculated also the correlation of the signals, subtracting the low-period component. The filtered signals show the high correlation with each other too.
Wavelet transforms provide a useful alternative to Fourier transforms for the decomposition of time series exhibiting non-stationary behaviour: it has been applied to the analysis of fluctuations in both laboratory (e.g. Han et al. 2000) and solar (e.g. Ofman et al. 2000; Ireland & De Moortel 2002) plasmas. The TRACE EUV data was analysed in both bandpasses using Morlet wavelet transforms to determine how the wave periods varied with time and along the loop. The intensities of the signal were summed over each 3 neighbouring pixels along the slit and then the wavelet analysis performed on each of these larger pixels.
Typical results of the wavelet analysis of propagating disturbances observed in both EUV bandpasses are shown in Fig. 4. The lower frequency spectral components were much more intense than the high frequency components, hence they needed to be filtered using a high pass filter method to allow the analysis of the high frequency part of the wave spectrum. Unfortunately, the steady detection of the periodic pattern with satisfactory confidence is not possible because of the high noise level in the signal analysed. However, the wavelet approach shows the presence of periodic patterns with two distinct period: 2-3 min and 5-8 min in both bandpasses. As both the periodicities are observed simultaneously and at the same positions, one possibility is that the shorter period is the second harmonic of the longer period, suggesting that the propagating disturbances can experience nonlinear steepening. This is consistent with the theoretical model of slow magnetoacoustic waves propagating along coronal loops developed by Nakariakov et al. (2000). Another possibility is that they could be due to direct excitation at these frequencies as 3 and 5 min oscillations are often detected in sunspots.
In contrast with the results of Robbrecht et al. (2001), the
propagating disturbances observed in different EUV bandpasses show
relatively high correlation. If the two bandpasses observe the same
plasma then the high correlation is naturally explained, it is however
more difficult to explain a decreasing correlation along diverging field
lines for a homogenous plasma, hence small scale temperature mixing is less likely to be responsible for the effect. The systematic decrease in correlation coefficient
with distance along the loop may be explained in terms of phase
mixing of the waves. If the intensity variations are produced by
parallel-propagating slow magnetoacoustic waves, their speed
depends only on the temperature corresponding to the bandpass.
Consequently, the speeds of the EUV propagating disturbances
observed in different bandpasses should be different provided the
plasmas observed in different bandpasses have different temperatures.
The initially high correlation suggests that the disturbances
observed in different bandpasses are generated by the same
mechanism.
When the waves are synchronically excited at an origin and then propagate
along the same path from the origin at different speeds, their
correlation decreases with distance from the origin. The actual
variation of the correlation is determined by two effects: the
difference in phase speeds of the waves observed in the two bandpasses; and the difference (if any) in the LOS angles formed
by the structures supporting the waves. These two mechanism can
actually work together. To quantify the extent of phase mixing and
consequent variation of the correlation coefficient, we simulate
the propagating disturbances observed in different bandpasses as
harmonic waves generated in phase at the same initial position and
propagating at different speeds from the origin,
We conclude that we observe slow magnetoacoustic waves propagating upwards along diverging magnetic field lines. Wavelet analysis shows the evidence of the presence of the second harmonics. This may be the first direct observation of a nonlinear wave phenomenon in the solar corona. Higher resolution, simultaneous, multi-wavelength observations will allow the exploration of wave propagation to greater heights and at higher frequencies. These wave's role in the coronal energy budget is yet to be determined. The Solar Dynamics Observatory will provide better time resolution, but further improvements in spatial resolution await new missions.
Acknowledgements
The Wavelet software was provided by C. Torrence and G. Compo, and is available at URL: http://paos.colorado.edu/research/wavelets/.
DBK was supported by a PPARC CASE studentship, and the work was also funded partly by the UK Department of Trade and Industry. The authors are grateful to Leon Ofman for valuable comments.