What can HMI's helioseismic capabilities tell us about flares & CMEs?
Brian Welsch, UCB
Several preliminary investigations suggest that further local helioseismology studies should yield progress on open questions about solar flares & CMEs.
- (1) Subsurface flows might play a role in filament formation; filaments often erupt as CMEs.
(2) A few observations of decreases in both subsurface kinetic helicity & surface sunspot rotation rates prior to flares suggest that magnetic energy from the solar interior might enter into the corona until saturation results, leading to a flare.
- (3) Photospheric velocity estimates can be used to quantify the fluxes of magnetic energy and helicity into the corona, and thereby illuminate processes transferring magnetic energy from the interior to the corona. Helioseismically determined surface and interior flows (from f- and p-modes, resp.) can be used to validate and complement photospheric flows estimated by other methods, e.g., tracking techniques.
- (4) Combined with sequences of vector magnetograms, helioseismically determined interior flows can both illuminate processes leading to photospheric magnetic evolution, and reveal properties of the subphotospheric magnetic field.
- (5) Any relationship between flare-related magnetic field changes and flare-induced helioseismic waves can be investigated.
Refs. for each topic:
[1] Hindman, Haber, & Toomre (2006)
- [2] Hill et al. (poster, 2006); Pevtov (SHINE talk, 2007)
- [3] Georgobiani et al. (2007); Welsch et al. (HMI mtg. poster, 2008)
[4] Longcope & Klapper (1997); Longcope & Welsch (2000)
- [5] Hudson, Fisher, and Welsch (2008)
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