Constraining the systematics of (acoustic) wave heating estimates in the solar chromosphere

TL;DR

This study investigates acoustic wave contributions to solar chromosphere heating by comparing UV and optical observations with advanced 3D radiative MHD models, revealing significant regional differences and systematic uncertainties affecting energy flux estimates.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of observational data with Bifrost simulations to constrain acoustic wave heating and highlights the impact of modeling systematics on energy flux conclusions.

Findings

Wave energy fluxes are insufficient to heat the chromosphere.

Internetwork and network regions show different wave propagation properties.

Systematic differences in models influence heating estimates.

Abstract

Acoustic wave heating is believed to contribute significantly to the missing energy input required to maintain the solar chromosphere in its observed state. We studied the propagation of waves above the acoustic cutoff in the upper photosphere into the chromosphere with ultraviolet and optical spectral observations interpreted through comparison with three dimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamic (rMHD) \emph{Bifrost} models to constrain the heating contribution from acoustic waves in the solar atmosphere. Sit-and-stare observations taken with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and data from the Interferometric BIdimensional Spectrograph (IBIS) were used to provide the observational basis of this work. We compared the observations with synthetic observables derived from the Bifrost solar atmospheric model. Our analysis of the \emph{Bifrost} simulations show that internetwork and enhanced network regions exhibit significantly different wave propagation properties, which are important for the accurate wave flux estimates. The inferred wave energy fluxes based on our observations are not sufficient to maintain the solar chromosphere. We point out that the systematics of the modeling approaches in the literature lead to differences which could determine the conclusions of this type of studies, based on the same observations.