Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-139). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xvi, 139 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-139).

The chromosphere and transition region of the solar atmosphere provide an interface between the cool photosphere (6000 K) and the hot corona (1 million K). Both layers exhibit dramatic deviations from thermal and hydrostatic equilibrium in the form of intense plasma heating and mass transfer. The exact mechanisms responsible for transporting energy to the upper atmosphere remain unknown, but these must include a variety of energetic processes operating across many spatial and temporal scales. This dissertation comprises three studies of possible mechanisms for plasma heating and energy transport in the solar chromosphere and transition region. The first study establishes the theoretical framework for a collisional, two-stream plasma instability in the quiet-Sun chromosphere similar to the Farley-Buneman instability which actively heats the E-region of Earth's ionosphere. After deriving a linear dispersion relationship and employing a semi-empirical model of the chromosphere along with carefully computed collision frequencies, this analysis shows that the threshold electron drift velocity for triggering the instability is remarkably low near the temperature minimum where convective overshoots could continuously trigger the instability. The second study investigates simultaneous Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) observations of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves in the chromospheres and transition regions of sunspots. By measuring the dominant wave periods, apparent phase velocities, and spatial and temporal separations between appearances of two observationally distinct oscillatory phenomena, the data show that these are consistent with upward-propagating slow magnetoacoustic modes tied to inclined magnetic field lines in the sunspot, providing a conduit for photospheric seismic energy to transfer upward. The third and final study focuses on intense, small-scale (1 arcsec) active region brightenings known as IRIS UV bursts. These exhibit dramatic FUV/NUV emission line splitting and deep absorption features, suggesting that they result from reconnection events embedded deep in the cool lower chromosphere. IRIS FUV spectral observations and Solar Dynamics Obser- vatory/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (SDO/HMI) magnetograms of a single evolving active region reveal that bursts prefer to form during the active region's emerging phase. These bursts tend to be spatially coincident with small-scale, photospheric, bipolar regions of upward and downward magnetic flux that dissipate as the active region matures.

No description available.

Abstract In this thesis solar active longitudes of X-ray flares and sunspots are studied. The fact that solar activity does not occur uniformly at all heliographic longitudes was noticed by Carrington as early as in 1843. The longitude ranges where solar activity occurs preferentially are called active longitudes. Active longitudes have been found in various manifestations of solar activity, such as sunspots, flares, radio emission bursts, surface and heliospheric magnetic fields, and coronal emissions. However, the active longitudes found when using different rigidly rotating reference frames differ significantly from each other. One reason is that the whole Sun does not rotate rigidly but differentially at different layers and different latitudes. The other reason is that the rotation of the Sun also varies with time. Earlier studies used a dynamic rotation frame for the differential rotation of the Sun and found two persistent active longitudes of sunspots in 1878-1996. However, the migration of active longitudes with respect to the Carrington rotation was treated there rather coarsely. We improved the accuracy of migration to less than one hour. Accordingly, not only the rotation parameters for each class of solar flares and sunspots are found to agree well with each other, but also the non-axisymmetry of flares and sunspots is systematically increased. We also studied the long-term variation of solar surface rotation. Using the improved analysis, the spatial distribution of sunspots in 1876-2008 is analyzed. The statistical evidence for different rotation in the northern and southern hemispheres is greatly improved by the revised treatment. Moreover, we have given consistent evidence for the periodicity of about one century in the north-south difference.

The occurrence of mid-latitude spread F (SF) over South Africa has not been extensively studied since the installation of the DPS-4 digisondes at Madimbo (30.88◦E, 22.38◦S), Grahamstown (33.32◦S, 26.50◦E) and Louisvale (28.51◦S, 21.24◦E). This study is intended to quantify the probability of the occurrence of F region disturbances associated with ionospheric spread F (SF) and L-band scintillation over South Africa. This study used available ionosonde data for 8 years (2000-2008) from the three South African stations. The SF events were identified manually on ionograms and grouped for further statistical analysis into frequency SF (FSF), range SF (RSF) and mixed SF (MSF). The results show that the diurnal pattern of SF occurrence peaks strongly between 23:00 and 00:00 UT. This pattern is true for all seasons and types of SF at Madimbo and Grahamstown during 2001 and 2005, except for RSF which had peaks during autumn and spring during 2001 at Madimbo. The probability of both MSF and FSF tends to increase with decreasing sunspot number (SSN), with a peak in 2005 (a moderate solar activity period). The seasonal peaks of MSF and FSF are more frequent during winter months at both Madimbo and Grahamstown. In this study SF was evident in ∼ 0.03% and ∼ 0.06% of the available ionograms at Madimbo and Grahamstown respectively during the eight year period. The presence of ionospheric irregularities associated with SF and scintillation was investigated using data from selected Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver stations distributed across South Africa. The results, based on GPS total electron content (TEC) and ionosonde measurements, show that SF over this region can most likely be attributed to travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs), caused by gravity waves (GWs) and neutral wind composition changes. The GWs were mostly associated with geomagnetic storms and sub-storms that occurred during periods of high and moderate solar activity (2001-2005). SF occurrence during the low solar activity period (2006-2008)can probably be attributed to neutral wind composition changes.

In the last few years, there has been significant progress in the development of a new model for explaining magnetic flux concentrations, by invoking the negative effective magnetic pressure instability (NEMPI) in a highly stratified turbulent plasma. According to this model, the suppression of the turbulent pressure by a large-scale magnetic field leads to a negative contribution of turbulence to the effective magnetic pressure (the sum of non-turbulent and turbulent contributions). For large magnetic Reynolds numbers the negative turbulence contribution is large enough, so that the effective magnetic pressure is negative, which causes a large-scale instability (NEMPI). One of the potential applications of NEMPI is to explain the formation of active regions on the solar surface. On the other hand, the solar dynamo is known to be responsible for generating large-scale magnetic field in the Sun. Therefore, one step toward developing a more realistic model is to study a system where NEMPI is excited from a dynamo-generated magnetic field. In this context, the excitation of NEMPI in spherical geometry was studied here from a mean- field dynamo that generates the background magnetic field. Previous studies have shown that for NEMPI to work, the background field can neither be too weak nor too strong. To satisfy this condition for the dynamo-generated magnetic field, we adopt an “alpha squared dynamo” with an α effect proportional to the cosine of latitude and taking into account alpha quenching. We performed these mean-field simulations (MFS) using the Pencil Code. The results show that dynamo and NEMPI can work at the same time such that they become a coupled system. This coupled system has then been studied separately in more detail in plane geometry where we used both mean-field simulations and direct numerical simulations (DNS). Losada et al. (2013) showed that rotation suppresses NEMPI. However, we now find that for higher Coriolis numbers, the growth rate increase again. This implies that there is another source that provides the excitation of an instability. This mechanism acts at the same time as NEMPI or even after NEMPI was suppressed. One possibility is that for higher Coriolis numbers, an α2 dynamo is activated and causes the observed growth rate. In other words, for large values of the Coriolis numbers we again deal with the coupled system of NEMPI and mean-field dynamo. Both, MFS and DNS confirm this assumption. Using the test-field method, we also calculated the dynamo coefficients for such a system which again gave results consistent with previous studies. There was a small difference though, which is interpreted as being due to the larger scale separation that we have used in our simulations. Another important finding related to NEMPI was the result of Brandenburg et al. (2013), that in the presence of a vertical magnetic field NEMPI results in magnetic flux concentrations of equipartition field strength. This leads to the formation of a magnetic spot. This finding stimulated us to investigate properties of NEMPI for imposed vertical fields in more detail. We used MFS and DNS together with implicit large eddy simulations (ILES) to confirm that an initially uniform weak vertical magnetic field will lead to a circular magnetic spot of equipartition field strength if the plasma is highly stratified and scale separation is large enough. We determined the parameter ranges for NEMPI for a vertical imposed field. Our results show that, as we change the magnitude of the vertical imposed field, the growth rate and geometry of the flux concentrations is unchanged, but their position changes. In particular, by increasing the imposed field strength, the magnetic concentration forms deeper down in the domain.

No description available.

The effects on image formation through a tilted interference filter in a converging beam are investigated and an adequate compensation procedure is established. A method that compensates for small-scale seeing distortions is also developed with the aim of co-aligning non-simultaneous solar images from different passbands. These techniques are applied to data acquired with a narrow tiltable filter at the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope. Tilting provides a way to scan the wing of the Ca II H line. The resulting images are used to map the temperature stratification and vertical temperature gradients in a solar active region containing a sunspot at a resolution approaching 0''10. The data are compared with hydro-dynamical quiet sun models and magneto-hydrodynamic models of plage. The comparison gives credence to the observational techniques, the analysis methods, and the simulations. Vertical temperature gradients are lower in magnetic structures than in non-magnetic. Line-of-sight velocities and magnetic field properties in the penumbra of the same sunspot are estimated using the CRISP imaging spectropolarimeter and straylight compensation adequate for the data. These reveal a pattern of upflows and downflows throughout the entire penumbra including the interior penumbra. A correlation with intensity positively identifies these flows as convective in origin. The vertical convective signatures are observed everywhere, but the horizontal Evershed flow is observed to be confined to areas of nearly horizontal magnetic field.  The relation between temperature gradient and total circular polarization in magnetically sensitive lines is investigated in different structures of the penumbra. Penumbral dark cores are prominent in total circular polarization and temperature gradient maps. These become longer and more contiguous with increasing height. Dark fibril structures over bright regions are observed in the Ca II H line core, above both the umbra and penumbra. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

Magnetic flux continually emerges from the Sun, rising through the solar interior, emerging at the photosphere in the form of sunspots and expanding into the atmosphere. Observations of sunspot rotations have been reported for over a century and are often accompanied by solar eruptions and flaring activity. In this thesis, we present 3D numerical simulations of the emergence of twisted flux tubes from the uppermost layers of the solar interior, examining the rotational movements of sunspots in the photospheric plane. The basic experiment introduces the mechanism and characteristics of sunspot rotation by a clear calculation of rotation angle, vorticity, magnetic helicity and energy, whereby we find an untwisting of the interior portion of the field, accompanied by an injection of twist into the atmospheric field. We extend this model by altering the initial field strength and twist of the sub-photospheric tube. This comparison reveals the rotation angle, helicity and current show a direct dependence on field strength. An increase in field strength increases the rotation angle, the length of fieldlines extending into the atmosphere, and the magnetic energy transported to the atmosphere. The fieldline length is crucial as we predict the twist per unit length equilibrates to a lower value on longer fieldlines, and hence possesses a larger rotation angle. No such direct dependence is found when varying the twist but there is a clear ordering in rotation angle, helicity, and energy, with more highly twisted tubes undergoing larger rotation angles. We believe the final angle of rotation is reached when the system achieves a constant degree of twist along the length of fieldlines. By extrapolating the size of the modelled active region, we find rotation angles and rates comparable with those observed. In addition, we explore sunspot rotation caused by sub-photospheric velocities twisting the footpoints of flux tubes.