Propagating Disturbances in Coronal Loops: A Detailed Analysis of Propagation Speeds

TL;DR

This study analyzes the propagation speeds of quasi-periodic disturbances in coronal loops using SDO/AIA data, revealing temperature dependence in sunspot regions and suggesting a significant contribution of cool plasma to observed emissions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed velocity analysis across multiple wavelengths for 41 examples, distinguishing between sunspot and non-sunspot regions and exploring the influence of temperature and plasma components.

Findings

Velocities at sunspots are temperature dependent.

Velocities at non-sunspot regions show no clear temperature dependence.

A substantial part of 193 Å emission in sunspot PDs is from cool plasma.

Abstract

Quasi-periodic disturbances have been observed in the outer solar atmosphere for many years now. Although first interpreted as upflows (Schrijver et al. (1999)), they have been widely regarded as slow magnetoacoustic waves, due to observed velocities and periods. However, recent observations have questioned this interpretation, as periodic disturbances in Doppler velocity, line width and profile asymmetry were found to be in phase with the intensity oscillations (De Pontieu et al. (2010),Tian1 et al. (2011))}, suggesting the disturbances could be quasi-periodic upflows. Here we conduct a detailed analysis of the velocities of these disturbances across several wavelengths using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We analysed 41 examples, including both sunspot and non sunspot regions of the Sun. We found that the velocities of propagating disturbances (PDs) located at sunspots are more likely to be temperature dependent, whereas the velocities of PDs at non sunspot locations do not show a clear temperature dependence. We also considered on what scale the underlying driver is affecting the properties of the PDs. Finally, we found that removing the contribution due to the cooler ions in the 193 A wavelength suggests that a substantial part of the 193 emission of sunspot PDs can be contributed to the cool component of 193\AA.