Bibcode
Felipe, T.; Khomenko, E.; Collados, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 719, Issue 1, pp. 357-377 (2010).
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8
2010
Journal
Citations
105
Refereed citations
100
Description
Waves observed in the photosphere and chromosphere of sunspots show
complex dynamics and spatial patterns. The interpretation of
high-resolution sunspot wave observations requires modeling of
three-dimensional (3D) nonlinear wave propagation and mode
transformation in the sunspot upper layers in realistic spot model
atmospheres. Here, we present the first results of such modeling. We
have developed a 3D nonlinear numerical code specially designed to
calculate the response of magnetic structures in equilibrium to an
arbitrary perturbation. The code solves the 3D nonlinear MHD equations
for perturbations; it is stabilized by hyper-diffusivity terms and is
fully parallelized. The robustness of the code is demonstrated by a
number of standard tests. We analyze several simulations of a sunspot
perturbed by pulses of different periods at a subphotospheric level,
from short periods, introduced for academic purposes, to longer and
realistic periods of 3 and 5 minutes. We present a detailed description
of the 3D mode transformation in a non-trivial sunspot-like magnetic
field configuration, including the conversion between fast and slow
magneto-acoustic waves and the Alfvén wave, by calculation of the
wave energy fluxes. Our main findings are as follows: (1) the conversion
from acoustic to the Alfvén mode is only observed if the driving
pulse is located out of the sunspot axis, but this conversion is
energetically inefficient; (2) as a consequence of the cutoff effects
and refraction of the fast magneto-acoustic mode, the energy of the
evanescent waves with periods around 5 minutes remains almost completely
below the level β = 1; (3) waves with frequencies above the cutoff
propagate field aligned to the chromosphere and their power becomes
dominating over that of evanescent 5 minute oscillations, in agreement
with observations.
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Magnetic fields are at the base of star formation and stellar structure and evolution. When stars are born, magnetic fields brake the rotation during the collapse of the mollecular cloud. In the end of the life of a star, magnetic fields can play a key role in the form of the strong winds that lead to the last stages of stellar evolution. During
Tobías
Felipe García