The formation of an atypical sunspot light bridge as a result of large-scale flux emergence

Abstract

We use a combination of full-disk data from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and high-resolution data from the Dunn Solar Telescope (DST) to study the formation, structure, and evolution of an atypical light bridge (LB) in a regular sunspot. The LB results from the emergence of magnetic flux with one footpoint rooted in a pore outside the parent sunspot that appears about 17 hrs before the LB. The pore has a polarity opposite to that of the sunspot and recedes away from it at a speed of about 0.4 km/s. This is accompanied by the development of an elongated magnetic channel in the outer penumbra which triggers the formation of the LB when it reaches the inner penumbral boundary. The LB is a nearly horizontal structure with a field strength of about 1.2 kG that exhibits long-lived photospheric blue-shifts of about 0.85 km/s along its entire length.The emergence of the LB leads to dynamic surges in the chromosphere and transition region about 13 min later. We derived the photospheric and chromospheric structure of the LB in the DST data from spectral line parameters and inversions of He i at 1083 nm, Si i at 1082.7 nm, Ca ii IR at 854 nm and Halpha at 656 nm, and speckle-reconstructed imaging at 700 nm and 430 nm. The LB shows an elongated filamentary shape in the photosphere without lateral extrusions. The thermal inversion of Ca ii IR reveals the LB to be about 600-800 K hotter than the umbra. Different sections of the LB are elevated to heights between 400 and 700 km. Our results indicate that the LB formation is part of a flux emergence event with the LB envelope reaching a height of about 29 Mm before dissolving after about 13 hr. We suggest that the existence of persistent, large-scale photospheric blue-shifts in LBs is the most likely criterion to distinguish between flux emergence events and overturning convection in field-free umbral intrusions.

arXiv commentAccepted for Publication in The Astrophysical Journal; 24 pages, 20 figures, 1 table

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• Sustained heating of the chromosphere and transition region over a sunspot light bridge
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• An Unusual Velocity Field in a Sunspot Penumbra