Transport Phenomena in Stochastic Magnetic Mirrors

In time – distance helioseismology, wave travel times are measured from the cross-correlation between Doppler velocities recorded at any two locations on the solar surface. However, one of the main uncertainties associated with such measurements is how to interpret observations made in regions of strong magnetic field. Isolating the effects of the magnetic field from thermal or sound-speed perturbations has proved to be quite complex and has yet to yield reliable results when extracting travel times from the cross-correlation function. One possible way to decouple these effects is by using a 3D sunspot model based on observed surface magnetic-field profiles, with a surrounding stratified, quiet-Sun atmosphere to model the magneto-acoustic ray propagation, and analyse the resulting ray travel-time perturbations that will directly account for wave-speed variations produced by the magnetic field. These artificial travel-time perturbation profiles provide us with several related but distinct observations: i) that strong surface magnetic fields have a dual effect on helioseismic rays – increasing their skip distance while at the same time speeding them up considerably compared to their quiet-Sun counterparts, ii) there is a clear and significant frequency dependence of both skip-distance and travel-time perturbations across the simulated sunspot radius, iii) the negative sign and magnitude of these perturbations appears to be directly related to the sunspot magnetic-field strength and inclination, iv) by “switching off” the magnetic field inside the sunspot, we are able to completely isolate the thermal component of the travel-time perturbations observed, which is seen to be both opposite in sign and much smaller in magnitude than those measured when the magnetic field is present. These results tend to suggest that purely thermal perturbations are unlikely to be the main effect seen in travel times through sunspots, and that strong, near-surface magnetic fields may be directly and significantly altering the magnitude and lateral extent of sound-speed inversions of sunspots made by time – distance helioseismology.KeywordsHelioseismology, direct modellingSunspots, magnetic fieldsMagnetic fields, models

We present two-dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations of line-tied asymmetric magnetic reconnection in the context of solar flare and coronal mass ejection current sheets. The reconnection process is made asymmetric along the inflow direction by allowing the initial upstream magnetic field strengths and densities to differ, and along the outflow direction by placing the initial perturbation near a conducting wall boundary that represents the photosphere. When the upstream magnetic fields are asymmetric, the post-flare loop structure is distorted into a characteristic skewed candle flame shape. The simulations can thus be used to provide constraints on the reconnection asymmetry in post-flare loops. More hard X-ray emission is expected to occur at the footpoint on the weak magnetic field side because energetic particles are more likely to escape the magnetic mirror there than at the strong magnetic field footpoint. The footpoint on the weak magnetic field side is predicted to move more quickly because of the requirement in two dimensions that equal amounts of flux must be reconnected from each upstream region. The X-line drifts away from the conducting wall in all simulations with asymmetric outflow and into the strong magnetic field region during most of the simulations with asymmetric inflow. There is net plasma flow across the X-line for both the inflow and outflow directions. The reconnection exhaust directed away from the obstructing wall is significantly faster than the exhaust directed towards it. The asymmetric inflow condition allows net vorticity in the rising outflow plasmoid which would appear as rolling motions about the flux rope axis.

The light-shining-through-walls (LSW) method of searching for ultralight bosonic dark matter (UBDM) uses lasers and strong dipole magnets to probe the coupling between photons and UBDM in the presence of a magnetic field. Since these experiments take place entirely in the laboratory, they offer a unique opportunity to perform a model independent measurement of this interaction. This involves shining a high-power laser through a magnetic field toward a wall which blocks the light. The interaction between the laser and the magnetic field generates a beam of UBDM that passes through the wall. Beyond the wall is another region of strong magnetic field that reconverts the UBDM back to photons that can then be measured by a single photon detection system. The sensitivity of these kinds of experiments can be improved further by implementing optical cavities before and after the wall to amplify the power of the light propagating through the magnetic fields. This chapter gives an introduction to LSW experiments and discusses a number of interesting challenges associated with the technique.

Oscillations have long been observed in the sunspot umbral chromosphere and transition region, connected to global p-mode oscillations. These p-modes are thought to undergo mode conversion to slow magnetoacoustic waves in regions of strong magnetic field. More recently, propagating oscillations have also been observed in solar coronal loops. Using new spectroscopic imaging data at transition-region temperatures, combined with coronal imaging, we present direct observations of the propagation of these slow magnetoacoustic p-modes through the transition region and into the solar corona, along the magnetic field. The waves are observed as oscillations in the chromosphere/transition region and propagations in the corona due to the emission scale height of the different temperature lines combined with the magnetic field geometry.

Small cyclic variations in the frequencies of acoustic modes are expected to be a common phenomenon in solar‐like pulsators, as a result of stellar magnetic activity cycles. The frequency variations observed throughout the solar and stellar cycles contain information about structural changes that take place inside the stars as well as about variations in magnetic field structure and intensity. The task of inferring and disentangling that information is, however, not a trivial one. In the sun and solar‐like pulsators, the direct effect of the magnetic field on the oscillations might be significantly important in regions of strong magnetic field (such as solar/stellar spots), where the Lorentz force can be comparable to the gas‐pressure gradient. Our aim is to determine the sun‐/starspot effect on the oscillation frequencies and attempt to understand if this effect contributes strongly to the frequency changes observed along the magnetic cycle. The total contribution of the spots to the frequency shifts results from a combination of direct and indirect effects of the magnetic field on the oscillations. In this first work we considered only the indirect effect associated with changes in the stratification within the starspot. Based on the solution of the wave equation and the variational principal we estimated the impact of these stratification changes on the oscillation frequencies of global modes in the sun and found that the induced frequency shifts are about two orders of magnitude smaller than the frequency shifts observed over the solar cycle (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

On the Sun, magnetic activity is essentially restricted to latitudes within 45° of the equator. However, active stars, such as RS CVn systems, and T Tauri stars generally show polar activity. I model the evolution of a toroidal magnetic flux tube as it rises from the base of the convection zone in various lower main-sequence stars and show that, on the main sequence, polar activity is more likely for less massive stars. For example, a 1 M☉ star must rotate with ω > 5 ω☉ in order to develop significant polar magnetic flux, while a 0.4 M☉ star will generate predominantly polar flux for ω > 0.5 ω☉. This leads to the expectation that essentially all M stars should display polar, rather than equatorial, magnetic activity. A similar effect is expected for RS CVn and T Tauri systems, and for giant stars. An important consequence of this polar activity is the inhibition of angular momentum loss from these systems. On the lower main sequence, angular momentum is lost via the interaction of the stellar magnetic field with the outflowing stellar wind. However, if regions of strong magnetic field are confined to the poles, stellar spin-down rates can be reduced dramatically, by up to a factor of 3 or more for early M stars. Examination of open clusters should show the presence of rapidly rotating M stars at ages beyond those previously expected.

We calculate the structure of a relativistic shock wave in which the internal energy of the shocked fluid is radiated away on a time scale much shorter than the characteristic shock propagation time. The shock is assumed to move through a uniformly magnetized, neutral plasma consisting of protons, electrons, and positrons, and allowance is made for the possible production of electron/positron pairs in the shock itself. The radiation mechanism is taken to be synchrotron and inverse-Compton emission (the latter involving both synchrotron-produced and externally supplied seed photons) by the electrons and positrons. We simplify the discussion by considering a shock in which the magnetic field is transverse to the direction of propagation and focus attention on the properties of the radiative zone that forms behind the shock transition. In particular, we investigate the possibility that the compression induced by the cooling of the gas amplifies the magnetic pressure until it reaches (and ultimately exceeds) equipartition with the thermal pressure (which, in turn, limits the overall compression). We show that, if a significant fraction of the postshock thermal energy is deposited in the electron/positron component, then a considerable portion of the emitted radiation will come from regions of strong magnetic field even if the field immediately behind the shock transition is well below equipartition. This field amplification mechanism may be relevant to the production of synchrotron flares in blazars, miniquasars, and gamma-ray burst sources. We consider the latter application in some detail and show that this process may play a role in the prompt $\gamma$-ray and possibly also the optical ``flash'' and radio ``flare'' emission, but probably not in the afterglow.

Continuous high-cadence and high spatial resolution Dopplergrams allow us to study subsurface dynamics that may be further extended to explore precursors of visible solar activity on the surface. Since the p-mode power is absorbed in the regions of high magnetic field, the inferences in these regions are often presumed to have large uncertainties. In this paper, using the Dopplergrams from space-borne Helioseismic Magnetic Imager, we compare horizontal flows in a shear layer below the surface and the photospheric layer in and around active regions. The photospheric flows are calculated using the local correlation tracking (LCT) method, while the ring-diagram technique of helioseismology is used to infer flows in the subphotospheric shear layer. We find a strong positive correlation between flows from both methods near the surface. This implies that despite the absorption of acoustic power in the regions of strong magnetic field, the flows inferred from the helioseismology are comparable to those from the surface measurements. However, the magnitudes are significantly different; the flows from the LCT method are smaller by a factor of 2 than the helioseismic measurements. Also, the median difference between the direction of corresponding vectors is 49°.

Characteristics of a GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well (QW) laser diode are studied for the first time under strong magnetic fields up to 30 Tesla. When field normal to QW plane is increased, the spontaneous emission spectrum is found to shift toward the higher photon energy, following the shift \\hbarωc/2 of the lowest Landau level in the region of strong magnetic fields. Moreover, the emission spectrum is shown to be very little affected when magnetic fields are applied parallel to the QW plane. These results give evidence of light emission from a fully-quantized zero-dimensional carrier system in GaAs QW structures with strong magnetic fields normal to the QW plane.

Useful aspects of chromospheric magnetic field data

Observations have shown that electrons and protons are energized up to at least 1 MeV in the magnetotail during substorms. This magnitude cannot be explained by the cross‐tail electrostatic field, which typically has a modest potential difference of only 50 kV. A rotational electric field induced by a time‐dependent magnetic field does not have such a limitation. In order to evaluate its capabilities a simple model of a localized, growing disturbance in the neutral sheet current was used to calculate perturbation magnetic and electric fields; the model includes the formation of X and O type neutral lines. Plasma sheet test particles were followed in these time‐dependent fields by using the full relativistic equation of motion. The most efficient energizing mechanism is a two‐step process, with an initial linear acceleration along a neutral line up to moderate energies, followed by betatron acceleration. The former imparts a large magnetic moment µ = W⊥/B to the particle as it begins to gyrate and drift in the magnetic field, W⊥ being the transverse kinetic energy. During this drift into regions of stronger magnetic field there is a large increase in W⊥, the relativistic invariant γµ remaining constant. Because of the rotational property of the induced electric field it is possible for a particle to gain energy even when the drift motion by itself would cause a loss. The model also includes acceleration along magnetic field lines in the plasma sheet, with moderate energy gain. A cyclic pattern of electron and proton precipitation is predicted, such as is observed during auroral breakup.

We have studied the correlation between the flare ribbon separation speed and the magnetic flux density in a two ribbon flare. The peak separation speed is up to about 260 km s <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> in a weak magnetic field region, while it is about 30 km s <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> in a strong magnetic field region. The separation speed is negatively correlated with the longitudinal magnetic field, and the negative correlation is the strongest at the early stage of the flare, and the weakest at position of the HXR source.

Energy and charge conserving semi-implicit particle-in-cell model for simulations of high-pressure plasmas in magnetic traps

A new generation of parity violation (PV) electron scattering experiments are planned to be carried out at the Institut für Kernphysik in Mainz. These experiments will be performed at low energies of 100-200 MeV using the new accelerator MESA (Mainz Energy recovering Superconducting Accelerator). One of the main challenges of such experiments is to achieve an accuracy in beam polarization measurements that must be below 0.5%. This very high accuracy can be reached using polarized atomic hydrogen gas, stored in an ultra-cold magnetic trap, as the target for electron beam polarimetry based on Mo/ller scattering. Electron spin-polarized atomic hydrogen can be stored at high densities of 1016 cm−2, over relatively long time periods, in a high magnetic field (8T) and at low temperatures (0.3K). The gradient force splits the ground state of the hydrogen into four states with different energies. Atoms in the low energy states are trapped in the strong magnetic field region whereas the high energy states are repelled and pumped away. The physics of ultra-cold atomic hydrogen in magnetic traps and the status of the Mainz Hydro-Mo/ller project will be presented.

Pore-scale numerical studies on determination of the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid saturated porous media