EMISSA: Exploring millimetre indicators of solar-stellar activity III. Comparison of Ca II indices and millimetre continua in a 3D model atmosphere

TL;DR

This study compares Ca II line indices and millimetre continuum emissions in solar atmospheres using advanced 3D models and ALMA simulations to establish more reliable stellar activity diagnostics.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive 3D modeling approach to analyze correlations between Ca II indices and mm continua, enhancing stellar activity measurement techniques.

Findings

Weak correlation between Ca II indices and mm brightness at high resolution.

Correlation increases as spatial resolution decreases.

Slopes of scatter plots decrease with increasing wavelength.

Abstract

The Ca II H & K lines are strong chromospheric diagnostics that can be used to determine the temperature stratification and magnetic structure of the solar atmosphere. The Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) offers complementary information on the thermal structure of stellar atmospheres using mm continuum radiation. The overall aim is to establish more robust solar/stellar activity indicators using ALMA observations in comparison with classical diagnostics, such as the s index and infrared triplet (IRT) index. A study was conducted using 1.5D radiative transfer codes RH1.5D and advanced radiative transfer (ART), along with an enhanced network atmosphere model generated by the state-of-the-art 3D radiation magnetohydrodynamics (rMHD) Bifrost code, to compute synthetic spectra for both Ca II lines and mm continua. To account for the limited spatial resolution of ALMA, we simulated the effect using a Gaussian point spread function (PSF). Additionally, we analysed the correlations and slopes of scatter plots between the Ca II indices and mm continuum for the original and degraded resolutions, focusing on the entire simulation box, quiet Sun regions, and enhanced network patches separately. The activity indices generated from these lines could further be used to compare the spectra of Sun-like stars with the solar spectrum. The Ca II activity indices and mm brightness temperatures are weakly correlated at the high resolution, with the highest correlation observed at a wavelength of 0.3 mm, corresponding to ALMA band 10. As the resolution decreases, the correlation consistently increases. Conversely, the slopes exhibit a decreasing trend with increasing wavelength, while the degradation of resolution does not noticeably affect the calculated slopes. Consequently, these relationships could be valuable for calibrating the mm continuum maps obtained through ALMA observations.