Fine wave dynamics in umbral flash sources

TL;DR

This study reveals the fine spatial and temporal wave structures associated with umbral flashes in sunspots, identifying two types of UFs and linking their origin to wave dynamics at magnetic loop footpoints.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel 2D imaging analysis of wave processes in sunspot magnetic structures related to UFs, highlighting the association with wave activity at loop footpoints.

Findings

Identified two types of UFs: background and local.

Local UFs are linked to wave activity at magnetic loop footpoints.

Maxima of three-minute oscillations coincide with UF peaks.

Abstract

Umbral flashes (UFs) are most common phenomenon of wave processes in sunspots. Studying the relationship between wave time dynamics and the origin of UFs requires further investigation of their fine spatial and height structure. We investigated the association between a short time increase in the variations of three-minute extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emission at footpoints of coronal magnetic loops and the UF emergence in sunspot umbra. We applied the pixelized wavelet filtering (PWF) technique to analyse a cube of the images obtained by SDO/AIA at 1600A, 304A, and 171A to study the spatio-temporal oscillation power distribution in individual magnetic loops. Time-distance plots were used to obtain the wave front propagation velocity. For the first time, we obtained the 2D images of the fine wave processes in magnetic structures of different spatial scales related to the UFs in sunspot. We revealed two types of the UFs as background and local. The background UFs associated with random increasing of separate parts of wave fronts. These UFs are seen as weak and diffuse details that ride the wave fronts without stable shapes and localization in space. The local UFs sources mainly localize near to the footpoint of magnetic loops, anchored in an umbra, along which the propagation of three-minute waves was observed. It is shown that the maxima of three-minute oscillation trains coincide with the peak intensity of UFs. The sunspot three-minute wave dynamics showed a relation between the localization of oscillations power peak at the coronal magnetic loop footpoints and the UFs origin. The spatial structure of the UFs sources, their power, and lifetime are determined by the cut-off frequency of the waves for the detected waveguides. We concluded that UFs are a global process of short-time increase of the wave activity.