ALMA Discovery of Solar Umbral Brightness Enhancement at {\lambda}=3 mm

TL;DR

This study reports the first high-resolution ALMA observation revealing a brightness enhancement in the sunspot umbra at 3 mm, indicating complex thermal structures and potential links to chromospheric or coronal features.

Contribution

It presents the first high-resolution 3 mm ALMA map of a sunspot, discovering an umbral brightness enhancement and exploring its possible origins.

Findings

Detected a brightness temperature increase of 800 K in the umbra

Found the enhancement coincides with IRIS brightness excess

Suggested the feature may relate to chromospheric or coronal phenomena

Abstract

We report the discovery of a brightness enhancement in the center of a large sunspot umbra at a wavelength of 3 mm using the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA). Sunspots are amongst the most prominent features on the solar surface, but many of their aspects are surprisingly poorly understood. We analyzed a {\lambda}=3 mm (100 GHz) mosaic image obtained by ALMA, which includes a large sunspot within the active region AR12470 on December 16, 2015. The 3 mm map has a field-of-view and spatial resolution, which is the highest spatial-resolution map of an entire sunspot in this frequency range. We find a gradient of 3 mm brightness from a high value in the outer penumbra to a low value in the inner penumbra/outer umbra. Within the inner umbra, there is a marked increase in 3mm brightness temperature, which we call an umbral brightness enhancement. This enhanced emission corresponds to a temperature excess of 800 K relative to the surrounding inner penumbral region and coincides with excess brightness in the 1330 and 1400 {\AA} slitjaw images of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), adjacent to a partial lightbridge. This {\lambda}=3 mm brightness enhancement may be an intrinsic feature of the sunspot umbra at chromospheric heights, such as a manifestation of umbral flashes, or it could be related to a coronal plume since the brightness enhancement was coincident with the footpoint of a coronal loop observed at 171 {\AA}.