Inward Propagating Plasma Parcels in the Solar Corona: Models with Aerodynamic Drag, Ablation, and Snowplow Accretion

TL;DR

This study models inward-propagating plasma parcels in the solar corona, demonstrating that snowplow accretion can explain their deceleration, and suggests these parcels originate above the Alfven surface with nonlinear initial speeds.

Contribution

Develops dynamical models showing snowplow accretion explains observed deceleration of inward plasma parcels in the solar corona.

Findings

Snowplow accretion models match observed deceleration patterns.

Initial parcel speeds are likely above the Alfven surface.

Inward flows may be associated with shocks, jets, or shear instabilities.

Abstract

Although the solar wind flows primarily outward from the Sun to interplanetary space, there are times when small-scale plasma inflows are observed. Inward-propagating density fluctuations in polar coronal holes were detected by the COR2 coronagraph on board the STEREO-A spacecraft at heliocentric distances of 7 to 12 solar radii, and these fluctuations appear to undergo substantial deceleration as they move closer to the Sun. Models of linear magnetohydrodynamic waves have not been able to explain these deceleration patterns, so they have been interpreted more recently as jets from coronal sites of magnetic reconnection. In this paper, we develop a range of dynamical models of discrete plasma parcels with the goal of better understanding the observed deceleration trend. We found that parcels with a constant mass do not behave like the observed flows, and neither do parcels undergoing ablative mass loss. However, parcels that accrete mass in a snowplow-like fashion can become decelerated as observed. We also extrapolated OMNI in situ data down to the so-called Alfven surface and found that the initial launch-point for the observed parcels may often be above this critical radius. In other words, in order for the parcels to flow back down to the Sun, their initial speeds are probably somewhat nonlinear (i.e., supra-Alfvenic) and thus the parcels may be associated with structures such as shocks, jets, or shear instabilities.