Detection of plasma fluctuations in white-light images of the outer solar corona: investigation of the spatial and temporal evolution

TL;DR

This study detects and characterizes quasi-periodic plasma density fluctuations in the outer solar corona using wavelet analysis of white-light images, revealing their spatial distribution, evolution, and relation to magnetic field structures.

Contribution

It introduces a wavelet-based method for localizing non-persistent coronal fluctuations and maps their spatial and temporal evolution across a wide coronal region.

Findings

Coronal fluctuations are intermittent and spatially coherent.

Larger fluctuations tend to be larger and evolve more slowly.

Fluctuation periodicities are comparable to their lifetimes.

Abstract

This work focus on the first results on the identification and characterization of periodic plasma density fluctuations in the outer corona, observed in STEREO-A COR1 white-light image time series. A 2D reconstruction of the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of the coronal fluctuation power has been performed over the whole plane of the sky, from 1.4 to 4.0 solar radii. The adopted diagnostic tool is based on wavelet transforms. This technique, with respect to the standard Fourier analysis, has the advantage of localizing non-persistent fluctuating features and exploring the variations of the relating wavelet power in both space and time. The map of the variance of the coronal brightness clearly outlines intermittent, spatially coherent fluctuating features, localized along, or adjacent to, the strongest magnetic field lines. In most cases they do not correspond to the coronal structures visible in the brightness maps. The results obtained provide a scenario in which the solar corona shows quasi-periodic, non-stationary density variations characterized by a wide range of temporal and spatial scales and strongly confined by the magnetic field topology. In addition, structures fluctuating with larger power are larger in size and evolve more slowly. The characteristic periodicities of the fluctuations are comparable to their lifetimes. This suggests either that plasma fluctuations lasting only one or two wave periods and initially characterized by a single dominant periodicity, rapidly decay into a turbulent mixed flow via nonlinear interactions with other plasma modes, or that they are damped by thermal conduction. [...]