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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 919 records · Page 51
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NASA NTRS2010

Interchange Reconnection and Coronal Hole Dynamics

We investigate the effect of magnetic reconnection between open and closed fields, often referred to as interchange reconnection, on the dynamics and topology of coronal hole boundaries. The most important and most prevalent three-dimensional topology of the interchange process is that of a small-scale bipolar magnetic field interacting with a large-scale background field. We determine the evolution of such a magnetic topology by numerical solution of the fully three-dimensional MHD equations in spherical coordinates. First, we calculate the evolution of a small-scale bipole that initially is completely inside an open field region and then is driven across a coronal hole boundary by photospheric motions. Next the reverse situation is calculated in which the bipole is initially inside the closed region and driven toward the coronal hole boundary. In both cases, we find that the stress imparted by the photospheric motions results in deformation of the separatrix surface between the closed field of the bipole and the background field, leading to rapid current sheet formation and to efficient reconnection. When the bipole is inside the open field region, the reconnection is of the interchange type in that it exchanges open and closed fields. We examine, in detail, the topology of the field as the bipole moves across the coronal hole boundary and find that the field remains well connected throughout this process. Our results, therefore, provide essential support for the quasi-steady models of the open field, because in these models the open and closed flux are assumed to remain topologically distinct as the photosphere evolves. Our results also support the uniqueness hypothesis for open field regions as postulated by Antiochos et al. On the other hand, the results argue against models in which open flux is assumed to diffusively penetrate deeply inside the closed field region under a helmet streamer. We discuss the implications of this work for coronal observations.

MHD (MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS)↗
DOE OSTI2017

Dynamics of Subarcsecond Bright Dots in the Transition Region above Sunspots and Their Relation to Penumbral Micro-jets

Recent high-resolution observations have revealed that subarcsecond bright dots (BDs) with sub-minute lifetimes appear ubiquitously in the transition region (TR) above sunspot penumbra. The presence of penumbral micro-jets (PMJs) in the chromosphere was previously reported. It was proposed that both the PMJs and BDs are formed due to a magnetic reconnection process and may play an important role in heating of the penumbra. Using simultaneous observations of the chromosphere from the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on board Hinode and observations of the TR from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph , we study the dynamics of BDs and their relation to PMJs. We find two types of BDs, one that is related to PMJs, and another that does not show any visible dynamics in the SOT Ca ii H images. From a statistical analysis we show that these two types have different properties. The BDs that are related to PMJs always appear at the top of the PMJs, the vast majority of which show inward motion and originate before the generation of the PMJs. These results may indicate that the reconnection occurs at the lower coronal/TR height and initiates PMJs at the chromosphere. This formation mechanism is in contrast with the formation of PMJs by reconnection in the (upper) photosphere between differently inclined fields.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Modeling Electron Acceleration and Transport in the Early Impulsive Phase of the 2017 September 10th Solar Flare

The X8.2-class limb flare on 2017 September 10 is among the best studied solar flare events owing to its great similarity to the standard flare model and the broad coverage by multiple spacecraft and ground-based observations. These multiwavelength observations indicate that electron acceleration and transport are efficient in the reconnection and flare looptop regions. However, there lacks a comprehensive model for explaining and interpreting the multi-faceted observations. In this work, we model the electron acceleration and transport in the early impulsive phase of this flare. We solve the Parker transport equation that includes the primary acceleration mechanism during magnetic reconnection in the large-scale flare region modeled by MHD simulations. We find that electrons are accelerated up to several MeV and fill a large volume of the reconnection region, similar to the observations shown in microwaves. The electron spatial distribution and spectral shape in the looptop region agree well with those derived from the microwave and hard X-ray emissions before magnetic islands grow large and dominate the acceleration. Future emission modelings using the electron maps will enable direct comparison with microwave and hard X-ray observations. These results shed new light on the electron acceleration and transport in a broad region of solar flares within a data-constrained realistic flare geometry.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

TORNADO-LIKE EVOLUTION OF A KINK-UNSTABLE SOLAR PROMINENCE

We report on the tornado-like evolution of a quiescent prominence on 2014 November 1. The eastern section of the prominence first rose slowly, transforming into an arch-shaped structure as high as ∼150 Mm above the limb; the arch then writhed moderately in a left-handed sense, while the original dark prominence material emitted in the Fe ix 171 Å passband, and a braided structure appeared at the eastern edge of the warped arch. The unraveling of the braided structure was associated with a transient brightening in the EUV and apparently contributed to the formation of a curtain-like structure (CLS). The CLS consisted of myriad thread-like loops rotating counterclockwise about the vertical if viewed from above. Heated prominence material was observed to slide along these loops and land outside the filament channel. The tornado eventually disintegrated and the remaining material flew along a left-handed helical path constituting approximately a full turn, as corroborated through stereoscopic reconstruction, into the cavity of the stable, western section of the prominence. We suggest that the tornado-like evolution of the prominence was governed by the helical kink instability, and that the CLS formed through magnetic reconnections between the prominence field and the overlying coronal field.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Sunspot Light Walls Suppressed by Nearby Brightenings

Light walls, as ensembles of oscillating bright structures rooted in sunspot light bridges, have not been well studied, although they are important for understanding sunspot properties. Using the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph and Solar Dynamics Observatory observations, here we study the evolution of two oscillating light walls each within its own active region (AR). The emission of each light wall decays greatly after the appearance of adjacent brightenings. For the first light wall, rooted within AR 12565, the average height, amplitude, and oscillation period significantly decrease from 3.5 Mm, 1.7 Mm, and 8.5 minutes to 1.6 Mm, 0.4 Mm, and 3.0 minutes, respectively. For the second light wall, rooted within AR 12597, the mean height, amplitude, and oscillation period of the light wall decrease from 2.1 Mm, 0.5 Mm, and 3.0 minutes to 1.5 Mm, 0.2 Mm, and 2.1 minutes, respectively. Particularly, a part of the second light wall even becomes invisible after the influence of a nearby brightening. These results reveal that the light walls are suppressed by nearby brightenings. Considering the complex magnetic topology in light bridges, we conjecture that the fading of light walls may be caused by a drop in the magnetic pressure, where the flux is canceled by magnetic reconnection at the site of the nearby brightening. Another hypothesis is that the wall fading is due to the suppression of driver source ( p -mode oscillation), resulting from the nearby avalanche of downward particles along reconnected brightening loops.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

THE FORMATION AND ERUPTION OF A SMALL CIRCULAR FILAMENT DRIVEN BY ROTATING MAGNETIC STRUCTURES IN THE QUIET SUN

We present the first observation of the formation and eruption of a small circular filament driven by a rotating network magnetic field (RNF) in the quiet Sun. In the negative footpoint region of an inverse J-shaped dextral filament, the RNF was formed by the convergence to supergranular junctions of several magnetic flux patches of the same polarity, and it then rotated counterclockwise (CCW) for approximately 11 hr and showed up as a CCW rotating EUV cyclone, during which time the filament gradually evolved into a circular filament that surrounded the cyclone. When the calculated convergence and vortex flows appeared around the RNF during its formation and rotation phases, the injected magnetic helicity calculation also showed negative helicity accumulation during the RNF rotation that was consistent with the dextral chirality of the filament. Finally, the RNF rotation stopped and the cyclone disappeared, and, probably due to an emerging bipole and its forced cancellation with the RNF, the closure filament underwent an eruption along its axis in the (clockwise) direction opposite to the rotation directions of the RNF and cyclone. These observations suggest that the RNFs might play an important role in the formation of nearby small-scale circular filaments as they transport and inject magnetic energy and helicity, and the formation of the EUV cyclones may be a further manifestation of the helicity injected into the corona by the rotation of the RNFs in the photosphere. In addition, the new emerging bipole observed before the filament eruption might be responsible for destabilizing the system and triggering the magnetic reconnection which proves useful for the filament eruption.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

IMAGING AND SPECTRAL OBSERVATIONS OF QUASI-PERIODIC PULSATIONS IN A SOLAR FLARE

We explore the quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in a solar flare observed by Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, Solar Dynamics Observatory, Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) on 2014 September 10. QPPs are identified as the regular and periodic peaks on the rapidly varying components, which are the light curves after removing the slowly varying components. The QPPs display only three peaks at the beginning on the hard X-ray emissions, but 10 peaks on the chromospheric and coronal line emissions, and more than seven peaks (each peak corresponds to a type III burst on the dynamic spectra) at the radio emissions. A uniform quasi-period of about 4 minutes is detected among them. AIA imaging observations exhibit that the 4-minute QPPs originate from the flare ribbon and tend to appear on the ribbon front. IRIS spectral observations show that each peak of the QPPs tends to a broad line width and a red Doppler velocity at C i, O iv, Si iv, and Fe xxi lines. Our findings indicate that the QPPs are produced by the non-thermal electrons that are accelerated by the induced quasi-periodic magnetic reconnections in this flare.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

MULTI-WAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS OF A SUBARCSECOND PENUMBRAL TRANSIENT BRIGHTENING EVENT

We report a subarcsecond penumbral transient brightening event with the high-spatial resolution observations from the 1.6 m New Solar Telescope (NST), Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph ( IRIS ), and the Solar Dynamics Observatory . The transient brightening, whose thermal energy is in the range of nanoflares, has signatures in the chromosphere, the transient region, and the corona. NST's H α channel reveals the fine structure of the event with a width as narrow as 101 km (0.″14), which is much smaller than the width from the previous observation. The transient brightening lasts for about 3 minutes. It is associated with a redshift of about 17 km s{sup −1}, found in the Si iv 1402.77 Å line and exhibits an inward motion to the umbra with a speed of 87 km s{sup −1}. The small-scale energy released from the event has a multi-temperature component. Spectral analysis of the brightening region from IRIS shows that not only the transition region lines such as Si iv 1402.77 Å and C ii 1334.53 Å, but also the chromospheric Mg ii k 2796.35 Å line are significantly enhanced and broadened. In addition, the event can be found in all the extreme-ultraviolet passbands of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly and the derived differential emission measure profile increases between 4 and 15 MK (or 6.6 ≤ log T ≤ 7.2) in the transient brightening phase. It is possible that the penumbral transient brightening event is caused by magnetic reconnection.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

LIGHT BRIDGE IN A DEVELOPING ACTIVE REGION. I. OBSERVATION OF LIGHT BRIDGE AND ITS DYNAMIC ACTIVITY PHENOMENA

Light bridges, the bright structures that divide the umbra of sunspots and pores into smaller pieces, are known to produce a wide variety of activity events in solar active regions (ARs). It is also known that the light bridges appear in the assembling process of nascent sunspots. The ultimate goal of this series of papers is to reveal the nature of light bridges in developing ARs and the occurrence of activity events associated with the light bridge structures from both observational and numerical approaches. In this first paper, exploiting the observational data obtained by Hinode, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we investigate the detailed structure of the light bridge in NOAA AR 11974 and its dynamic activity phenomena. As a result, we find that the light bridge has a weak, horizontal magnetic field, which is transported from the interior by a large-scale convective upflow and is surrounded by strong, vertical fields of adjacent pores. In the chromosphere above the bridge, a transient brightening occurs repeatedly and intermittently, followed by a recurrent dark surge ejection into higher altitudes. Our analysis indicates that the brightening is the plasma heating due to magnetic reconnection at lower altitudes, while the dark surge is the cool, dense plasma ejected from the reconnection region. From the observational results, we conclude that the dynamic activity observed in a light bridge structure such as chromospheric brightenings and dark surge ejections are driven by magnetoconvective evolution within the light bridge and its interaction with the surrounding magnetic fields.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Observational Evidence for the Associated Formation of Blobs and Raining Inflows in the Solar Corona

The origin of the slow solar wind is still a topic of much debate. The continual emergence of small transient structures from helmet streamers is thought to constitute one of the main sources of the slow wind. Determining the height at which these transients are released is an important factor in determining the conditions under which the slow solar wind forms. To this end, we have carried out a multipoint analysis of small transient structures released from a north–south tilted helmet streamer into the slow solar wind over a broad range of position angles during Carrington Rotation 2137. Combining the remote-sensing observations taken by the Solar-TErrestrial RElations Observatory ( STEREO ) mission with coronagraphic observations from the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory ( SOHO ) spacecraft, we show that the release of such small transient structures (often called blobs), which subsequently move away from the Sun, is associated with the concomitant formation of transient structures collapsing back toward the Sun; the latter have been referred to by previous authors as “raining inflows.” This is the first direct association between outflowing blobs and raining inflows, which locates the formation of blobs above the helmet streamers and gives strong support that the blobs are released by magnetic reconnection.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1993

A mechanism for the multiple brightenings of dayside poleward-moving auroral forms

Magnetic reconnection plays an important role in the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling and may lead to the formation of the dayside auroras. Observations of the dayside auroras may provide clues to the reconnection process at the magnetopause. Recently Fasel et al. (1992) observed poleward-moving dayside auroral forms that rebrighten during their lifetimes. Lee et. al. (1993) examined the topology of magnetic flux ropes formed by the patchy multiple X-line reconnection (PMXR), in which a magnetic flux tube reconnects with other flux tubes at multiple sites of limited extent. This paper develops the connection between the evolution of the magnetic flux ropes and the multiple brighentings of poleward-moving dayside auroral forms.

Fasel, G. J.↗
DOE OSTI2017

Stratified Simulations of Collisionless Accretion Disks

This paper presents a series of stratified-shearing-box simulations of collisionless accretion disks in the recently developed framework of kinetic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), which can handle finite non-gyrotropy of a pressure tensor. Although a fully kinetic simulation predicted a more efficient angular-momentum transport in collisionless disks than in the standard MHD regime, the enhanced transport has not been observed in past kinetic-MHD approaches to gyrotropic pressure anisotropy. For the purpose of investigating this missing link between the fully kinetic and MHD treatments, this paper explores the role of non-gyrotropic pressure and makes the first attempt to incorporate certain collisionless effects into disk-scale, stratified disk simulations. When the timescale of gyrotropization was longer than, or comparable to, the disk-rotation frequency of the orbit, we found that the finite non-gyrotropy selectively remaining in the vicinity of current sheets contributes to suppressing magnetic reconnection in the shearing-box system. This leads to increases both in the saturated amplitude of the MHD turbulence driven by magnetorotational instabilities and in the resultant efficiency of angular-momentum transport. Our results seem to favor the fast advection of magnetic fields toward the rotation axis of a central object, which is required to launch an ultra-relativistic jet from a black hole accretion system in, for example, a magnetically arrested disk state.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Can Substorm Particle Acceleration Be Applied to Solar Flares?

Using test particle studies in the electromagnetic fields of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of magnetic reconnection, we study the energization of charged particles in the context of the standard two-ribbon flare picture in analogy to the standard magnetospheric substorm paradigm. In particular, we investigate the effects of the collapsing field (“collapsing magnetic trap”) below a reconnection site, which has been demonstrated to be the major acceleration mechanism that causes energetic particle acceleration and injections observed in Earth’s magnetotail associated with substorms and other impulsive events. We contrast an initially force-free, high-shear field (low beta) with low and moderate shear, finite-pressure (high-beta) arcade structures, where beta represents the ratio between gas (plasma) and magnetic pressure. We demonstrate that the energization affects large numbers of particles, but the acceleration is modest in the presence of a significant shear field. Without incorporating loss mechanisms, the effect on particles at different energies is similar, akin to adiabatic heating, and thus is not a likely mechanism to generate a power-law tail onto a (heated or not heated) Maxwellian velocity distribution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

An improved ten-moment closure for reconnection and instabilities

The integration of kinetic effects in fluid models is important for global simulations of Earth's magnetosphere. The use of the two-fluid ten-moment model, which includes the pressure tensor for both species, has had some success in simulating Ganymede and Mercury with a simple closure model. Here, we discuss a heat flux closure which accounts for some limitations of the earlier work while remaining computationally tractable. Comparisons with kinetic simulations for magnetic reconnection and lower-hybrid drift instabilities show good agreement with kinetic results and improvements on previous closure models.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

MINI-FILAMENT ERUPTION AS THE INITIATION OF A JET ALONG CORONAL LOOPS

Minifilament eruptions (MFEs) and coronal jets are different types of solar small-scale explosive events. We report an MFE observed at the New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST). As seen in the NVST H α images, during the rising phase, the minifilament erupts outward orthogonally to its length, accompanied with a flare-like brightening at the bottom. Afterward, dark materials are found to possibly extend along the axis of the expanded filament body. The MFE is analogous to large filament eruptions. However, a simultaneous observation of the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows that a jet is initiated and flows out along nearby coronal loops during the rising phase of the MFE. Meanwhile, small hot loops, which connect the original eruptive site of the minifilament to the footpoints of the coronal loops, are formed successively. A differential emission measure analysis demonstrates that, on the top of the new small loops, a hot cusp structure exists. We conjecture that the magnetic fields of the MFE interact with magnetic fields of the coronal loops. This interaction is interpreted as magnetic reconnection that produces the jet and the small hot loops.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Higher-order nonequilibrium term: Effective power density quantifying evolution towards or away from local thermodynamic equilibrium

A common approach to assess the nature of energy conversion in a classical fluid or plasma is to compare power densities of the various possible energy conversion mechanisms. A leading research area is quantifying energy conversion for systems that are not in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), as is common in a number of fluid and plasma systems. Here we introduce the “higher-order nonequilibrium term” (HORNET) effective power density, which quantifies the rate of change of departure of a phase space density from LTE. It has dimensions of power density, which allows for quantitative comparisons with standard power densities. We employ particle-in-cell simulations to calculate HORNET during two processes, magnetic reconnection and decaying kinetic turbulence in collisionless magnetized plasmas, that inherently produce non-LTE effects. We investigate the spatial variation of HORNET and the time evolution of its spatial average. By comparing HORNET with power densities describing changes to the internal energy (pressure dilatation, Pi − D , and divergence of the vector heat flux density), we find that HORNET can be a significant fraction of these other measures (8% and 35% for electrons and ions, respectively, for reconnection; up to 67% for both electrons and ions for turbulence), meaning evolution of the system towards or away from LTE can be dynamically important. Applications to numerous plasma phenomena are discussed. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS2018

Effect of the Reconnection Electric Field on Electron Distribution Functions in the Diffusion Region of Magnetotail Reconnection

Electron distribution functions in the electron diffusion region during symmetric magnetic reconnection are investigated by means of theory and fully kinetic simulations. Crescent‐like striations are formed in distribution functions in the velocity plane perpendicular to the magnetic field. Using an analytical current sheet, we solve the equation of motion for electrons, and derive the shape of a crescent distribution, as a function of the distance from the neutral line, field gradients, and the reconnection electric field. Each crescent is tilted in the velocity plane because of the acceleration by the reconnection electric field, and multiple stripes appear due to multiple meandering bounces. Applying the theory to distribution functions observed in Earth's magnetotail, we deduce the amplitude of the reconnection electric field.

Bessho, N.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Inversion technique to obtain local ion temperature profiles for an axisymmetric plasma with toroidal and radial velocities

A matrix inversion technique is derived to calculate local ion temperature from line-integrated measurements of an extended emission source in an axisymmetric plasma which exactly corrects for both toroidal velocity and radial velocity components. Local emissivity and toroidal velocity can be directly recovered from line-integrated spectroscopic measurements, but an independent measurement of the radial velocity is necessary to complete the temperature inversion. The extension of this technique to handle the radial velocity is relevant for magnetic reconnection and merging compression devices where temperature inversion from spectroscopic measurements is desired. A simulation demonstrates the effects of radial velocity on the determination of ion temperature.

ion temperature↗