Sunspots are the most conspicuous feature seen on the solar photosphere and are manifestations of the solar magnetic field. Their study, then, may provide us with a greater understanding of the dynamo mechanism thought to be responsible for the generation of this field. In this thesis, the oscillations of sunspots are studied by making use of observational data from two instruments: the Nobeyama Radioheliograph (NoRH) and the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on board the Hinode spacecraft. First, a study of long period oscillations was undertaken in which two long period peaks (P > 10 min) were identified in the power spectra of time series generated from sets of images of 3 sunspots observed with NoRH. In addition, by using the techniques of period, power, correlation and lag mapping, it was found that the power in each of these peaks was concentrated over the umbral regions and that there were two regions of approximately equal size oscillating in anti-phase with each other. It was suggested that these properties could be signatures of a "shallow" sunspot. A follow-up study was then performed, in which the lifetimes of the long period oscillations were investigated over a period of 9 days. These oscillations were seen to dominate the spectra during this interval and the periods and amplitudes were stable during that time. A simple model of a damped, driven simple harmonic oscillator (in which the driving term was nonlinear) was proposed to explain the generation and support of the oscillations. Finally, a study of the spatial properties of the 3 minute oscillations was performed by applying the mapping techniques mentioned above to Hinode/SOT data. The distributions of power and lag of maximum correlation coefficient were found to be non-uniform over the sunspots under study and this may be indicative of inhomogeneities of the physical quantities in the structures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:560147 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Chorley, N. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/47200/ |
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