Large Photospheric Doppler Shift in Solar Active Region 12673: I. Field-Aligned Flows

TL;DR

This study investigates strong, persistent Doppler shifts in a solar active region, revealing that these shifts are largely due to field-aligned flows along magnetic structures, using advanced velocity estimation and high-resolution observations.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new velocity estimator, DAVE4VMwDV, which better recovers field-aligned flows and explains Doppler shifts in delta sunspots compared to previous methods.

Findings

Doppler shifts up to 3.2 km/s observed during light bridge formation

Velocity vectors largely aligned with inclined magnetic fields

Correlation between Doppler velocity and magnetic inclination cosine

Abstract

Delta ($\delta$) sunspots sometimes host fast photospheric flows along the central magnetic polarity inversion line (PIL). Here we study the strong Doppler shift signature in the central penumbral light bridge of solar active region NOAA 12673. Observations from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) indicate highly sheared, strong magnetic fields. Large Doppler shifts up to 3.2 km s$^{-1}$ appeared during the formation of the light bridge and persisted for about 16 hours. A new velocity estimator, called DAVE4VMwDV, reveals fast converging and shearing motion along the PIL from HMI vector magnetograms, and recovers the observed Doppler signal much better than an old version of the algorithm. The inferred velocity vectors are largely (anti-)parallel to the inclined magnetic fields, suggesting that the observed Doppler shift contains significant contribution from the projected, field-aligned flows. High-resolution observations from the Hinode/Spectro-Polarimeter (SP) further exhibit a clear correlation between the Doppler velocity and the cosine of the magnetic inclination, which is in agreement with HMI results and consistent with a field-aligned flow of about 9.6 km s$^{-1}$. The complex Stokes profiles suggest significant gradients of physical variables along the line of sight. We discuss the implications on the $\delta$-spot magnetic structure and the flow-driving mechanism.