Statistical evolution of quiet-Sun small scale magnetic features using Sunrise observations

Abstract

The evolution of small magnetic features in quiet regions of the Sun provides a unique window to probing solar magneto-convection. Here we analyze small scale magnetic features in the quiet Sun, using the high resolution, seeing-free observations from the Sunrise balloon borne solar observatory. Our aim is to understand the contribution of different physical processes, such as splitting, merging, emergence and cancellation of magnetic fields to the rearrangement, addition and removal of magnetic flux in the photosphere. We employ a statistical approach for the analysis and the evolution studies are carried out using a feature tracking technique. In this paper we provide a detailed description of the feature tracking algorithm that we have newly developed and we present the results of a statistical study of several physical quantities. The results on the fractions of the flux in the emergence, appearance, splitting, merging, disappearance and cancellation qualitatively agrees with other recent studies. To summarize, the total flux gained in unipolar appearance is an order of magnitude larger than the total flux gained in emergence. On the other hand, the bi-polar cancellation contributes nearly an equal amount to the loss of magnetic flux as unipolar disappearance. The total flux lost in cancellation is nearly $6-8$ times larger than the total flux gained in emergence. One big difference between our study and previous similar studies is that thanks to the higher spatial resolution of Sunrise we can track features with fluxes as low as $9\times 10^{14}$ Mx. This flux is nearly an order of magnitude lower than the smallest fluxes of the features tracked in the highest resolution previous studies based on Hinode data.

23 pages, 18 figures, Accepted for publication in the journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A)

References in corpus (12)

• Emergence of Small-Scale Magnetic Loops in the Quiet Sun Internetwork
• Quiet Sun internetwork magnetic fields from the inversion of Hinode measurements
• Small-scale solar magnetic fields
• Solar Magnetic Tracking. I. Software Comparison and Recommended Practices
• The Solar Internetwork. I. Contribution to the Network Magnetic Flux
• Hinode Observations of Magnetic Elements in Internetwork Areas
• Structure and Dynamics of Isolated Internetwork Ca II H Bright Points Observed by Sunrise
• Stokes diagnostics of simulated solar magneto-convection
• Internetwork magnetic field distribution from simultaneous 1.56 micron and 630 nm observations
• Inclinations of small quiet-Sun magnetic features based on a new geometric approach
• The history of a quiet-Sun magnetic element revealed by IMaX/SUNRISE
• Hierarchical analysis of the quiet Sun magnetism

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The Solar Orbiter mission -- Science overview
• High-frequency Oscillations in Small Magnetic Elements Observed with Sunrise/SuFI
• The magnetic drivers of campfires seen by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) on Solar Orbiter
• Estimation of the magnetic flux emergence rate in the quiet Sun from Sunrise data
• Genesis and Coronal-jet-generating Eruption of a Solar Minifilament Captured by IRIS Slit-raster Spectra
• Cancellation of Small-Scale Magnetic Features
• On the Magnetic Nature of an Exploding Granule as Revealed by Sunrise/IMaX