Possible Role of Strong Acoustic Scatterers in Disposing of Radiative Flux Blocked by Sunspots

Broock, Elena; Donea, Alina; Martinez-Cifuentes, Angel; Lindsey, Charles
Referencia bibliográfica

SDO 2025 Science Workshop: A Gathering of the Helio-hive! Online at <A HREF="https://sdo2025.sdo-workshops.org/">https://sdo2025.sdo-workshops.org/<…

Fecha de publicación:
2
2025
Número de autores
4
Número de autores del IAC
1
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
Phase-correlation helioseismic holography of large sunspot in the 2.5--4.5-mHz p-mode spectrum, by Broock, Donea, Martinez & Lindsey show a signature that could be explained by fragmentation of magnetic flux into thin strands within the top few hundred km of sunspot subphotospheres. If so, this reinforces a hypothesis by Parker that such a fragmentation of magnetic flux in this layer is crucial to sunspot stability. The thermal structure of the medium separating the magnetic strands would become overstable to vertical oscillations that would momentarily penetrate the overlying magnetic monolith manifesting bright, transient umbral dots, known to be the primary source of the heavily diminished thermal flux that penetrates into the sunspot photosphere. Parker suggested, at length, that the remainder of the blocked flux was sequestered into oscillatory waves. In the case of downwardly propagating Alfven or slow-mode waves would disappear from the global solar radiative flux and would be invisible in the p-mode spectrum. How this energy eventually is disposed of sometime after the magnetic flux had been ejected, is among the open questions. We ask whether, alternatively, the overstable oscillations in question could inject the blocked energy flux into the solar interior in the for of p-modes in the 0.1--1.0-mHz spectrum. Such waves that would inhabit the solar interior for days while their photospheric signatures, distributed over a relative continuum, would be practically invisible to familiar helioseismic diagnostics. Could "strong acoustic scatterers" of p-modes in the helioseismic signatures, discovered by Broock et al. (2023), be a local manifestation of these hypothetical low-frequency acoustic emitters? The lower limit of the foregoing spectrum is in line with the approximate lifetime of the "strong acoustic scatterers" we have sampled to date.