Utilizing the slope of the brightness temperature continuum as a diagnostic tool of solar ALMA observations

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the slope of the brightness temperature continuum in ALMA solar observations can serve as a diagnostic tool for local plasma temperature gradients, revealing dynamic processes like shocks.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate and interpret the brightness temperature slope from ALMA data using 3D simulations, linking it to solar atmospheric dynamics.

Findings

Positive slopes indicate increasing temperature with height.

Negative slopes are associated with decreasing temperature and shock waves.

The method can distinguish different atmospheric layers and dynamic events.

Abstract

The intensity of radiation at millimeter wavelengths from the solar atmosphere is closely related to the plasma temperature and the height of formation of the radiation is wavelength dependent. From that follows that the slope of the brightness temperature (T$_\mathrm{b}$) continuum, samples the local gradient of the gas temperature of the sampled layers in the solar atmosphere. We use solar observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) and perform estimations and prediction of the slope of the T$_\mathrm{b}$ continuum based on differences between synthetic observables at different ALMA receiver sub-bands (2.8-3.2 mm; band 3) and (1.20-1.31 mm; band 6) from a state-of-the-art 3D rMHD simulation. The slope of the continuum is coupled to the small-scale dynamics and a positive sign indicates an increase in temperature with height while a negative sign implies a decrease. Network patches are dominated by large positive slopes while quiet Sun region show a mixture of positive and negative slopes, much in connection to propagating shock waves and the temporal evolution of the slopes can therefore be used to identify shocks. The observability of the slope of brightness temperatures is estimated for angular resolutions corresponding to ALMA observations. The simulations also show that the radiation of both bands 3 and 6 can origin from several components at different heights simultaneously and that the delay of shock signatures between two wavelengths does not necessarily reflect the propagation speed, but could be caused by different rate of change of opacity of above-lying layers. The slope of the T$_\mathrm{b}$ continuum sampled at different ALMA receiver sub-bands serves as indicator of the slope of the local plasma temperature at the sampled heights in the atmosphere, which offers new diagnostic possibilities to measure the underlying physical properties.