New Applications of Ultraviolet Spectroscopy to the Identification of Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration Processes

Details New Applications of Ultraviolet Spectroscopy to the Identification of Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration Processes New Applications of Ultraviolet Spectroscopy to the Identification of Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration Processes

May 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sh21b09c&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SH21B-09

Other

2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 7509 Corona, 7549 Ultraviolet Emissions, 7594 Instruments And Techniques, 7827 Kinetic And Mhd Theory

Scientific paper

The Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) aboard SOHO has revealed surprisingly extreme plasma conditions in the extended solar corona. This presentation reviews several new ways that UVCS and future spectroscopic instruments can be used to identify the physical processes responsible for producing the various components of the solar wind. The most promising mechanism for heating and accelerating heavy ions remains the dissipation of ion cyclotron waves, but the origin of these waves---as well as the dominant direction of propagation relative to the background magnetic field---is not yet known. Ultraviolet spectroscopy of a sufficient number of ions would be able to pinpoint the precise magnetohydrodynamic modes and the relative amounts of damping, turbulent cascade, and local plasma instability in the corona. (A simple graphical comparison of line-width ratios will be presented as a first step in this direction.) Spectroscopic observations with sufficient sensitivity can also detect departures from Gaussian line shapes that are unique identifiers of non-Maxwellian velocity distributions arising from cyclotron (or other) processes. Even without these next-generation diagnostics, UVCS data are continuing to put constraints on how the heating and acceleration mechanisms respond to changes in the ``background'' properties of coronal holes and streamers; i.e., geometry, latitude, and density. These provide crucial scaling relations in the acceleration region of the fast and slow solar wind that must be reproduced by any candidate theory. This work is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant NAG5-10093 to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, by Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, and by the Swiss contribution to the ESA PRODEX program.

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