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Simulations of solar filament fine structures and their counterstreaming flows

Nature Astronomy volume 4, pages 994–1000 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Solar filaments, also called solar prominences when appearing above the solar limb, are cold, dense materials suspended in the hot tenuous solar corona, consisting of numerous long, fibril-like threads. These threads are the key to disclosing the physics of solar filaments. Similar structures also exist in galaxy clusters. Besides their mysterious formation, filament threads are observed to move with alternating directions, which are called counterstreaming flows. However, the origin of these flows has not been clarified yet. Here we report that turbulent heating at the solar surface is the key, which randomly evaporates materials from the solar surface to the corona, naturally reproducing the formation and counterstreamings of the sparse threads in the solar corona. We further suggest that while the cold Hα counterstreamings are mainly due to longitudinal oscillations of the filament threads, there are million-kelvin counterstreamings in the corona between threads, which are alternating unidirectional flows.

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Fig. 1: Magnetic configuration of our 2D model rendered in the 3D space.
Fig. 2: Evolution of the filament.
Fig. 3: The distribution of various parameters in the solar corona at t = 259 min.
Fig. 4: Synthesized Hα image after superposing the results at different times.
Fig. 5: Dynamics of the filament threads and the ambient solar corona.
Fig. 6: Evolution of the heating profile at the footpoints along x = 0 in our simulation.

Data availability

Any snapshots of simulation data (2 TB in size) are available on request to Y.H.Z. (yuhaozhou1991@gmail.com). The data for the figures are avaliable at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11956482.

Code availability

The code we used is the open-source code AMRVAC 2.0, which can be downloaded directly from its website49.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Heinzel, R. Keppens, T. Yokoyama, K. E. Yang and E. S. Liang for valuable suggestions, partly during the ISSI-BJ team meeting. P.F.C. was supported by the Chinese foundations (NSFC 11533005 and 11961131002) and Jiangsu 333 Project (BRA2017359). Y.H.Z. is supported by the Belgian FWO-NSFC project G0E9619N and the Program A for Outstanding PhD candidates in Nanjing University. The simulations were done on the computers in the High Performance Computing Centre of Nanjing University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Y. H. Zhou, P. F. Chen, J. Hong & C. Fang

  2. Centre for Mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, Department of Mathematics, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Y. H. Zhou

  3. Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education, Nanjing, China

    Y. H. Zhou, P. F. Chen, J. Hong & C. Fang

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  1. Y. H. Zhou
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Contributions

Y.H.Z. performed the simulations and wrote the first draft. P.F.C. initiated the study, supervised the project and led the discussions. J.H. contributed to the calculation of the synthesized EUV image. C.F. contributed to discussions on the Hα calculation.

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Correspondence to P. F. Chen.

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Zhou, Y.H., Chen, P.F., Hong, J. et al. Simulations of solar filament fine structures and their counterstreaming flows. Nat Astron 4, 994–1000 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1094-3

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