Co-spatial velocity and magnetic swirls in the simulated solar photosphere

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to investigate whether photospheric velocity swirls are co-spatial and co-temporal with magnetic swirls, supporting their role in exciting Alfvén pulses that may heat the solar atmosphere.

Contribution

It provides the first statistical evidence from simulations that velocity and magnetic swirls in the photosphere are often co-located and co-rotating, confirming a key condition for pulse excitation.

Findings

Over 80% of velocity swirls are associated with magnetic concentrations.

Approximately 71% of velocity swirls co-exist with magnetic swirls with the same rotation direction.

Detected velocity swirls are short-lived, with lifetimes less than 20 seconds.

Abstract

Context. Velocity or intensity swirls have now been shown to be widely present throughout the photosphere and chromosphere. It has been suggested that these events could contribute to the heating of the upper solar atmosphere, via exciting Alfv\'en pulses, which could carry significant amounts of energy. However, the conjectured necessary physical conditions for their excitation, that the magnetic field rotates co-spatially and co-temporally with the velocity field, has not been verified. Aims. We aim to understand whether photospheric velocity swirls exist co-spatially and co-temporally with photospheric magnetic swirls, in order to demonstrate the link between swirls and pulses. Methods. The automated swirl detection algorithm (ASDA) is applied to the photospheric horizontal velocity and vertical magnetic fields obtained from a series of realistic numerical simulations using the RMHD code Bifrost. The spatial relationship between the detected velocity and magnetic swirls is further investigated via a well-defined correlation index (CI) study. Results. On average, there are ~63 short-lived photospheric velocity swirls (with lifetimes mostly less than 20 s, and average radius of ~37 km and rotating speeds of ~2.5 km/s) detected in a field of view (FOV) of 6\times6 Mm^{-2}, implying a total population of velocity swirls of ~1.06\times10^7 in the solar photosphere. More than 80% of the detected velocity swirls are found to be accompanied by local magnetic concentrations in intergranular lanes. On average, ~71% of the detected velocity swirls have been found to co-exist with photospheric magnetic swirls with the same rotating direction. Conclusions. The co-temporal and co-spatial rotation in the photospheric velocity and magnetic fields provide evidence that the conjectured condition for the excitation of Alfv\'en pulses by photospheric swirls is fulfilled.