Effects of the chromospheric Ly{\alpha} line profile shape on the determination of the solar wind HI outflow velocity using the Doppler dimming technique

TL;DR

This study investigates how the shape of the chromospheric Lyα line profile influences the accuracy of solar wind HI outflow velocity measurements using the Doppler dimming technique, finding a relatively small impact on velocity estimates.

Contribution

The paper quantifies the effect of chromospheric Lyα line profile variability on solar wind velocity measurements, demonstrating that it introduces a manageable uncertainty of about 9-12%.

Findings

Variability in line width is about 50%.

Variability in the central reversal depth is about 69%.

Impact on velocity estimates is approximately 9-12%.

Abstract

The determination of solar wind outflow velocity is fundamental in order to probe the mechanisms of wind acceleration in the corona. We aim to study, via the Doppler dimming technique, the effects that the chromospheric Ly{\alpha} line profile shape causes on the determination of the outflow speed of coronal HI atoms. The Doppler dimming technique takes into account the decrease of coronal Ly{\alpha} radiation in regions where HI atoms flow out in the solar wind. Starting from UV observations (UVCS/SOHO) of the coronal Ly{\alpha} line and simultaneous measurements of pB (LASCO/SOHO and Mk3/MLSO), we studied the effect of the pumping chromospheric Ly{\alpha} line profile through measurements from SOHO/SUMER, UVSP/SMM and LPSP/OSO-8, taken from representative on-disk regions and as a function of time during the solar activity cycle. In particular, we considered the effect of four chromospheric line parameters: line width, depth of the central reversal, asymmetry and distance of the peaks. We find that the range of variability of these parameters is of about 50% for the width, 69% for the depth of the central reversal, 35% for the asymmetry, and 50% for the distance of the peaks. Then, we find that the variability of the pumping Ly{\alpha} profile affects the estimates of the coronal HI velocity by about 9-12%. Therefore, this uncertainty is smaller than other physical quantities uncertainties, and a constant in time and unique shape of the Ly{\alpha} profile over the solar disk can be adopted in order to estimate the solar wind outflow velocity.