Observation of High-speed Outflow on Plume-like Structures of the Quiet Sun and Coronal Holes with SDO/AIA

Abstract

Observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) reveal ubiquitous episodic outflows (jets) with an average speed around 120 km s-1 at temperatures often exceeding a million degree in plume-like structures, rooted in magnetized regions of the quiet solar atmosphere. These outflows are not restricted to the well-known plumes visible in polar coronal holes, but are also present in plume-like structures originating from equatorial coronal holes and quiet-Sun regions. Outflows are also visible in the "interplume" regions throughout the atmosphere. Furthermore, the structures traced out by these flows in both plume and inter-plume regions continually exhibit transverse (Alfvenic) motion. Our finding suggests that high-speed outflows originate mainly from the magnetic network of the quiet Sun and coronal holes, and that the plume flows observed are highlighted by the denser plasma contained therein. These outflows might be an efficient means to provide heated mass into the corona and serve as an important source of mass supply to the solar wind. We demonstrate that the quiet-Sun plume flows can sometimes significantly contaminate the spectroscopic observations of the adjacent coronal holes - greatly affecting the Doppler shifts observed, thus potentially impacting significant investigations of such regions.

17 pages, 8 figures, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (9)

• Observing the Roots of Solar Coronal Heating - in the Chromosphere
• The Spectroscopic Signature of Quasi-periodic Upflows in Active Region Timeseries
• Structure and Dynamics of the Sun's Open Magnetic Field
• First Stereoscopic Coronal Loop Reconstructions from Stereo Secchi Images
• STEREO Observations of Quasi-Periodically Driven High Velocity Outflows in Polar Plumes
• Propagating intensity disturbances in polar corona as seen from AIA/SDO
• Propagating waves in polar coronal holes as seen by SUMER and EIS
• Accelerating waves in polar coronal holes as seen by EIS and SUMER
• Stereoscopic Polar Plume Reconstructions from Stereo/Secchi Images

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• The Magnetic Field in the Solar Atmosphere
• An Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph first view on Solar Spicules
• Two components of the coronal emission revealed by EUV spectroscopic observations
• Generation of quasi-periodic waves and flows in the solar atmosphere by oscillatory reconnection
• The Solar Corona as probed by Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3)
• Spectroscopic Observations of Propagating Disturbances in a Polar Coronal Hole: Evidence of Slow Magneto-acoustic Waves
• Measurements of Outflow Velocities in On-Disk Plumes from EIS Hinode Observations
• Multi-channel Observations of Plasma Outflows and the Associated Small-Scale Magnetic Field Cacellations on the Edges of an Active Region