Convectively driven sinks and magnetic fields in the quiet-Sun

©2017 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We study the relation between mesogranular flows, convectively driven sinks and magnetic fields using high spatial resolution spectropolarimetric data acquired with the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment on board Sunrise. We obtain the horiz...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Requerey, Iker S., Toro, José Carlos del, Bellot Rubio, Luis R., Martínez Pillet, V., Solanki, S. K., Schmidt, W.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/147535
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/147535
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Methods: observational
Sun: granulation
Sun: magnetic fields
Sun: photosphere
Techniques: polarimetric
Techniques: spectroscopic
Descripción
Sumario:©2017 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We study the relation between mesogranular flows, convectively driven sinks and magnetic fields using high spatial resolution spectropolarimetric data acquired with the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment on board Sunrise. We obtain the horizontal velocity flow fields of two quiet-Sun regions (31.2 × 31.2 Mm2) via local correlation tracking. Mesogranular lanes and the central position of sinks are identified using Lagrange tracers. We find $6.7\times {10}^{-2}$ sinks per Mm2 in the two observed regions. The sinks are located at the mesogranular vertices and turn out to be associated with (1) horizontal velocity flows converging to a central point and (2) long-lived downdrafts. The spatial distribution of magnetic fields in the quiet-Sun is also examined. The strongest magnetic fields are preferentially located at sinks. We find that 40% of the pixels with longitudinal components of the magnetic field stronger than 500 G are located in the close neighborhood of sinks. In contrast, the small-scale magnetic loops detected by Martínez González et al. in the same two observed areas do not show any preferential distribution at mesogranular scales. The study of individual examples reveals that sinks can play an important role in the evolution of quiet-Sun magnetic features.