arXiv subjects

Amy R. Winebarger

Publications and source records attributed to Amy R. Winebarger.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

A sudden fine-scale bright kernel captured by Hi-C Flare in 11 MK emission during an M1.6-class solar flare's post-maximum phase

On April 17, 2024, the third successful Hi-C sounding rocket flight, Hi-C Flare, recorded coronal images in Fe XXI 129 A emission from 11 MK plasma during the post-maximum phase of an M1.6-class solar flare, achieving unprecedented spatial (~300 km) and temporal (1.3 s) resolutions. The flare started at 21:55 UT, peaked at 22:08 UT, and lasted ~40 minutes. Hi-C observed for over five minutes (22:15:45 to 22:21:25), starting roughly eight minutes after flare maximum. A sudden compact bright burst - 875 +/- 25 km wide, lasting 90 +/- 1.3 s, exhibiting a proper motion of ~50 km/s, and splitting into two toward the end - occurs near the foot of some post-flare loops. Its size and brightness are reminiscent of flare-ribbon kernels during a flare's rapid rise phase, kernels marking sites of sudden heating and hot plasma upflow, making its occurrence during the late phase surprising. Such isolated brightenings in a flare's post-maximum phase are rare, and have not been previously reported. The kernel was detected in all SDO/AIA channels. Its 1600 A light curve peaked ~50 s earlier than its 131 A light curve, similar to that of flare-ribbon kernels, albeit with a smaller delay of ~25 s, during the impulsive phase of the flare. In SDO/HMI magnetograms, the kernel sits in unipolar positive magnetic flux near an embedded clump of negative flux. Although localized magnetic reconnection within the kernel (a microflare) cannot be ruled out for its cause, the observations favor the localized brightening being an isolated, exceptionally late flare-ribbon kernel, resulting from an exceptionally late burst of the flare's coronal reconnection.

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arXiv2025

Flare-Driven Plasma Dynamics and Elemental Abundance Redistribution

Since the advent of X-ray and EUV spectroscopy, the discovery of the First Ionization Potential (FIP) effect--where coronal elemental compositions diverge from their photospheric values based on the element's FIP--has remained a key puzzle in solar and stellar astrophysics. These deviations exhibit significant fluctuations during flares, yet their connection to plasma dynamics has remained unclear. Here, we report a clear correlation between temperature-sensitive flaring plasma emission and element-specific abundance changes for a solar flare. These findings indicate that energy deposition in the chromosphere drives plasma evaporation from different chromospheric heights, modulating elemental abundances. Hydrodynamic simulations support these observations, showing that varying energy deposition magnitudes generate plasma upflows from different chromospheric heights, leading to element-specific FIP fractionation. These results provide new insights into the dynamic coupling of flare energy, plasma flows, and abundance variability, with implications for understanding coupling between different atmospheric layers.

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arXiv2025

Abundance Diagnostics from Slitless Imaging Spectrometer: A Proof-of-Concept for MaGIXS-2

Elemental abundance diagnostics in the solar corona are crucial for understanding energy transport, plasma heating, and magnetic activity. Most earlier imaging-spectroscopic studies have relied on slit-based spectrometers, which offer high spectral resolution but are limited in spatiotemporal coverage and temperature diagnostics. In contrast, slitless spectrographs like the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) produce overlapping spatial-spectral data (overlappograms) to enable wide-field imaging spectroscopy with broader temperature coverage. However, extracting elemental abundances from overlappogram data remains inherently challenging due to spatial and spectral confusion. In this work, we present a proof-of-concept technique for elemental abundance diagnostics from overlappograms, demonstrating its feasibility with simulated MaGIXS-2 observations.

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arXiv2024

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Nanoflare Heating During Active Region Evolution

Nanoflares are believed to be key contributors to heating solar non-flaring active regions, though their individual detection remains challenging. This study uses a data-driven field-aligned hydrodynamic model to examine nanoflare properties throughout the lifecycle of AR12758. We simulate coronal loop emissions, where each loop is heated by random nanoflares depending on the loop parameters derived from photospheric magnetograms observed by SDO/HMI. Simulated X-ray flux and temperature can reproduce the temporal variations observed by Chandrayaan-2/XSM. Our findings show that high-frequency nanoflares contribute to cool emissions across the AR, while low- and intermediate- frequency primarily contribute to hot emissions. During the emerging phase, energy deposition is dominated by low-frequency events. Post-emergence, energy is deposited by both low- and intermediate-frequency nanoflares, while as the AR ages, the contribution from intermediate- and high-frequency nanoflares increases. The spatial distribution of heating frequencies across the AR reveals a clear pattern: the core of the active region spends most of its time in a low-frequency heating state, the periphery is dominated by high-frequency heating, and the region between the core and periphery experiences intermediate-frequency heating.

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arXiv2024

Determining the nanoflare heating frequency of an X-ray Bright Point observed by MaGIXS

Nanoflares are thought to be one of the prime candidates that can heat the solar corona to its multi-million kelvin temperature. Individual nanoflares are difficult to detect with the present generation instruments, however their presence can be inferred by comparing simulated nanoflare-heated plasma emissions with the observed emission. Using HYDRAD coronal loop simulations, we model the emission from an X-ray bright point (XBP) observed by the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS), along with nearest-available observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) onboard Hinode observatory. The length and magnetic field strength of the coronal loops are derived from the linear-force-free extrapolation of the observed photospheric magnetogram by Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard SDO. Each loop is assumed to be heated by random nanoflares, whose magnitude and frequency are determined by the loop length and magnetic field strength. The simulation results are then compared and matched against the measured intensity from AIA, XRT, and MaGIXS. Our model results indicate the observed emissions from the XBP under study could be well matched by a distribution of nanoflares with average delay times 1500 s to 3000 s, which suggest that the heating is dominated by high-frequency events. Further, we demonstrate the high sensitivity of MaGIXS and XRT to diagnose the heating frequency using this method, while AIA passbands are found to be the least sensitive.

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arXiv2024

Can emission measure distributions derived from extreme-ultraviolet images accurately constrain high temperature plasma?

Measuring the relative amount of high-temperature, low-emission-measure plasma is considered to be a smoking gun observation to constrain the frequency of plasma heating in coronal structures. Often, narrowband, extreme ultraviolet images, such as those obtained by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), are used to determine the emission measure (EM) distribution, though the sensitivity to high temperature plasma is limited. Conversely, the soft X-ray wavelength range offers multiple high temperature diagnostics, including emission lines of N VII, O VII, O VIII, Fe XVII, Ne IX, and Mg XI, which can provide tight constraints to the high temperature plasma in the log T 6.1 to 6.7 range. The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS), a slitless spectrograph launched on a NASA sounding rocket on July 30, 2021 resolved an X-ray bright point in multiple emission lines in the soft X-ray wavelength range. Using coordinated observations of the same X-ray bright point from SDO/AIA, we compare and contrast the EM distributions from the EUV image data, the X-ray spectra, as well as the combined EUV and X-ray dataset. In this paper, we demonstrate that EM distributions from SDO/AIA data alone can overestimate the amount of high temperature (log T > 6.4) plasma in the solar corona by a factor of 3 to 15. Furthermore, we present our effort to cross-calibrate Hinode/XRT response functions by comparing the observed XRT fluxes with the predicted ones from combined MaGIXS-1 + AIA EM analysis.

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arXiv2022

The First Flight of the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS)

The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) sounding rocket experiment launched on July 30, 2021 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. MaGIXS is a unique solar observing telescope developed to capture X-ray spectral images, in the 6 - 24 Angstrom wavelength range, of coronal active regions. Its novel design takes advantage of recent technological advances related to fabricating and optimizing X-ray optical systems as well as breakthroughs in inversion methodologies necessary to create spectrally pure maps from overlapping spectral images. MaGIXS is the first instrument of its kind to provide spatially resolved soft X-ray spectra across a wide field of view. The plasma diagnostics available in this spectral regime make this instrument a powerful tool for probing solar coronal heating. This paper presents details from the first MaGIXS flight, the captured observations, the data processing and inversion techniques, and the first science results.

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arXiv2022

Dominance of Bursty over Steady Heating of the 4--8 MK Coronal Plasma in a Solar Active Region: Quantification using Maps of Minimum, Maximum, and Average Brightness

A challenge in characterizing active region (AR) coronal heating is in separating transient (bursty) loop heating from the diffuse background (steady) heating. We present a method of quantifying coronal heating's bursty and steady components in ARs, applying it to FeXVIII (hot94) emission of an AR observed by SDO/AIA. The maximum, minimum, and average brightness values for each pixel, over a 24 hour period, yield a maximum-brightness map, a minimum-brightness map, and an average-brightness map of the AR. Running sets of such three maps come from repeating this process for each time step of running windows of 20, 16, 12, 8, 5, 3, 1 and 0.5 hours. From each running window's set of three maps, we obtain the AR's three corresponding luminosity light curves. We find: (1) The time-averaged ratio of minimum-brightness-map luminosity to average-brightness-map luminosity increases as the time window decreases, and the time-averaged ratio of maximum-brightness-map luminosity to average-brightness-map luminosity decreases as the window decreases. (2) For the 24-hour window, the minimum-brightness map's luminosity is 5% of the average-brightness map's luminosity, indicating that at most 5% of the AR's hot94 luminosity is from heating that is steady for 24 hours. (3) This upper limit on the fraction of the hot94 luminosity from steady heating increases to 33% for the 30-minute running window. This requires that the heating of the 4--8 MK plasma in this AR is mostly in bursts lasting less than 30 minutes: at most a third of the heating is steady for 30 minutes.

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arXiv2022

Parallel plasma loops and the energization of the solar corona

The outer atmosphere of the Sun is composed of plasma heated to temperatures well in excess of the visible surface. We investigate short cool and warm (<1 MK) loops seen in the core of an active region to address the role of field-line braiding in energising these structures. We report observations from the High-resolution Coronal imager (Hi-C) that have been acquired in a coordinated campaign with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). In the core of the active region, the 172 A band of Hi-C and the 1400 A channel of IRIS show plasma loops at different temperatures that run in parallel. There is a small but detectable spatial offset of less than 1 arcsec between the loops seen in the two bands. Most importantly, we do not see observational signatures that these loops might be twisted around each other. Considering the scenario of magnetic braiding, our observations of parallel loops imply that the stresses put into the magnetic field have to relax while the braiding is applied: the magnetic field never reaches a highly braided state on these length-scales comparable to the separation of the loops. This supports recent numerical 3D models of loop braiding in which the effective dissipation is sufficiently large that it keeps the magnetic field from getting highly twisted within a loop.

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arXiv2021

Calibration of the MaGIXS experiment II: Flight Instrument Calibration

The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) is a sounding rocket experiment that observes the soft X-ray spectrum of the Sun from 6.0 - 24 Angstrom (0.5 - 2.0 keV), successfully launched on 30 July 2021. End-to-end alignment of the flight instrument and calibration experiments are carried out using the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. In this paper, we present the calibration experiments of MaGIXS, which include wavelength calibration, measurement of line spread function, and determination of effective area. Finally, we use the measured instrument response function to predict the expected count rates for MaGIXS flight observation looking at a typical solar active region

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arXiv2020

Calibration of the MaGIXS experiment I: Calibration of the X-ray source at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF)

The Marshall Grazing Incidence Spectrometer {\it MaGIXS} is a sounding rocket experiment that will observe the soft X-ray spectrum of the Sun from 24 - 6.0 Å (0.5 - 2.0 keV) and is scheduled for launch in 2021. Component and instrument level calibrations for the {\it MaGIXS} instrument are carried out using the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. In this paper, we present the calibration of the incident X-ray flux from the electron impact source with different targets at the XRCF using a CCD camera; the photon flux at the CCD was low enough to enable its use as a "photon counter" i.e. the ability to identify individual photon hits and calculate their energy. The goal of this paper is two-fold: 1) to confirm that the flux measured by the XRCF beam normalization detectors is consistent with the values reported in the literature and therefore reliable for {\it MaGIXS} calibration and 2) to develop a method of counting photons in CCD images that best captures their number and energy

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arXiv2020

Evidence for and Analysis of Multiple Hidden Coronal Strands in Cross-Sectional Emission Profiles: Further Results from NASA's High-resolution Solar Coronal Imager

Previous work utilising NASA's High-resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C 2.1) 17.2 nm observations revealed that, even at the increased spatial scales available in the data-set, there may be evidence for coronal structures that are still not fully resolved. In this follow-up study, cross-section slices of coronal strands are taken across the Hi-C 2.1 field-of-view. Following previous loop width studies, the background emission is removed to isolate the coronal strands. The resulting intensity variations are reproduced by simultaneously fitting multiple Gaussian profiles using a non-linear least-squares curve fitting method. In total, 183 Gaussian profiles are examined for possible structures that are hinted at in the data. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) is determined for each Gaussian, which are then collated and analysed. The most frequent structural widths are $\approx$450-575 km with 47% of the strand widths beneath NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) resolving scale (600-1000 km). Only 17% reside beneath an AIA pixel width (435 km) with just 6% of the strands at the Hi-C 2.1 resolving scale ($\approx$220-340 km). These results suggest that non-Gaussian shaped cross-sectional emission profiles observed by Hi-C 2.1 are the result of multiple strands along the integrated line-of-sight that can be resolved, rather than being the result of even finer sub-resolution elements.

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arXiv2020

The drivers of active region outflows into the slow solar wind

Plasma outflows from the edges of active regions have been suggested as a possible source of the slow solar wind. Spectroscopic measurements show that these outflows have an enhanced elemental composition, which is a distinct signature of the slow wind. Current spectroscopic observations, however, do not have sufficient spatial resolution to distinguish what structures are being measured or to determine the driver of the outflows. The High-resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) flew on a sounding rocket in May, 2018, and observed areas of active region outflow at the highest spatial resolution ever achieved (250 km). Here we use the Hi-C data to disentangle the outflow composition signatures observed with the Hinode satellite during the flight. We show that there are two components to the outflow emission: a substantial contribution from expanded plasma that appears to have been expelled from closed loops in the active region core, and a second contribution from dynamic activity in active region plage, with a composition signature that reflects solar photospheric abundances. The two competing drivers of the outflows may explain the variable composition of the slow solar wind.

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arXiv2020

Is the High-Resolution Coronal Imager Resolving Coronal Strands? Results from AR 12712

Following the success of the first mission, the High-Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) was launched for a third time (Hi-C 2.1) on 29th May 2018 from the White Sands Missile Range, NM, USA. On this occasion, 329 seconds of 17.2 nm data of target active region AR 12712 was captured with a cadence of ~4s, and a plate scale of 0.129''/pixel. Using data captured by Hi-C 2.1 and co-aligned observations from SDO/AIA 17.1 nm we investigate the widths of 49 coronal strands. We search for evidence of substructure within the strands that is not detected by AIA, and further consider whether these strands are fully resolved by Hi-C 2.1. With the aid of Multi-Scale Gaussian Normalization (MGN), strands from a region of low-emission that can only be visualized against the contrast of the darker, underlying moss are studied. A comparison is made between these low-emission strands with those from regions of higher emission within the target active region. It is found that Hi-C 2.1 can resolve individual strands as small as ~202km, though more typical strands widths seen are ~513km. For coronal strands within the region of low-emission, the most likely width is significantly narrower than the high-emission strands at ~388km. This places the low-emission coronal strands beneath the resolving capabilities of SDO/AIA, highlighting the need of a permanent solar observatory with the resolving power of Hi-C.

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arXiv2019

Hi-C 2.1 Observations of Small-Scale Miniature-Filament-Eruption-Like Cool Ejections in Active Region Plage

We examine 172 Ang ultra-high-resolution images of a solar plage region from the Hi-C 2.1 ("Hi-C") rocket flight of 2018 May 29. Over its five-minute flight, Hi-C resolves a plethora of small-scale dynamic features that appear near noise level in concurrent Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) 171 Ang images. For ten selected events, comparisons with AIA images at other wavelengths and with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) images indicate that these features are cool (compared to the corona) ejections. Combining Hi-C 172 Ang, AIA 171 Ang, IRIS 1400 Ang, and H$α$, we see that these ten cool ejections are similar to the H$α$ "dynamic fibrils" and Ca ii "anemone jets" found in earlier studies. The front of some of our cool ejections are likely heated, showing emission in IRIS 1400 Ang. On average, these cool ejections have approximate widths: $3''.2 \pm 2''.1$, (projected) maximum heights and velocities: $4''.3 \pm 2''.5$ and $23 \pm 6$ km/s, and lifetimes: $6.5 \pm 2.4$ min. We consider whether these Hi-C features might result from eruptions of sub-minifilaments (smaller than the minifilaments that erupt to produce coronal jets). Comparisons with SDO's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) magnetograms do not show magnetic mixed-polarity neutral lines at these events' bases, as would be expected for true scaled-down versions of solar filaments/minifilaments. But the features' bases are all close to single-polarity strong-flux-edge locations, suggesting possible local opposite-polarity flux unresolved by HMI. Or, it may be that our Hi-C ejections instead operate via the shock-wave mechanism that is suggested to drive dynamic fibrils and the so-called type I spicules.

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arXiv2019

Hi-C 2.1 Observations of Jetlet-like Events at Edges of Solar Magnetic Network Lane

We present high-resolution, high-cadence observations of six, fine-scale, on-disk jet-like events observed by the High-resolution Coronal Imager 2.1 (Hi-C 2.1) during its sounding-rocket flight. We combine the Hi-C 2.1 images with images from SDO/AIA, and IRIS, and investigate each event's magnetic setting with co-aligned line-of-sight magnetograms from SDO/HMI. We find that: (i) all six events are jetlet-like (having apparent properties of jetlets), (ii) all six are rooted at edges of magnetic network lanes, (iii) four of the jetlet-like events stem from sites of flux cancelation between majority-polarity network flux and merging minority-polarity flux, and (iv) four of the jetlet-like events show brightenings at their bases reminiscent of the base brightenings in coronal jets. The average spire length of the six jetlet-like events (9,000$\pm$3000km) is three times shorter than that for IRIS jetlets (27,000$\pm$8000km). While not ruling out other generation mechanisms, the observations suggest that at least four of these events may be miniature versions of both larger-scale coronal jets that are driven by minifilament eruptions and still-larger-scale solar eruptions that are driven by filament eruptions. Therefore, we propose that our Hi-C events are driven by the eruption of a tiny sheared-field flux rope, and that the flux-rope field is built and triggered to erupt by flux cancelation.

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arXiv2019

Fine-scale explosive energy release at sites of prospective magnetic flux cancellation in the core of the solar active region observed by Hi-C 2.1, IRIS and SDO

The second Hi-C flight (Hi-C2.1) provided unprecedentedly-high spatial and temporal resolution ($\sim$250km, 4.4s) coronal EUV images of Fe IX/X emission at 172 Å, of AR 12712 on 29-May-2018, during 18:56:21-19:01:56 UT. Three morphologically-different types (I: dot-like, II: loop-like, III: surge/jet-like) of fine-scale sudden-brightening events (tiny microflares) are seen within and at the ends of an arch filament system in the core of the AR. Although type Is (not reported before) resemble IRIS-bombs (in size, and brightness wrt surroundings), our dot-like events are apparently much hotter, and shorter in span (70s). We complement the 5-minute-duration Hi-C2.1 data with SDO/HMI magnetograms, SDO/AIA EUV images, and IRIS UV spectra and slit-jaw images to examine, at the sites of these events, brightenings and flows in the transition-region and corona and evolution of magnetic flux in the photosphere. Most, if not all, of the events are seated at sites of opposite-polarity magnetic flux convergence (sometimes driven by adjacent flux emergence), implying likely flux cancellation at the microflare's polarity inversion line. In the IRIS spectra and images, we find confirming evidence of field-aligned outflow from brightenings at the ends of loops of the arch filament system. In types I and II the explosion is confined, while in type III the explosion is ejective and drives jet-like outflow. The light-curves from Hi-C, AIA and IRIS peak nearly simultaneously for many of these events and none of the events display a systematic cooling sequence as seen in typical coronal flares, suggesting that these tiny brightening-events have chromospheric/transition-region origin.

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arXiv2019

The High-Resolution Coronal Imager, Flight 2.1

The third flight of the High-Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C 2.1) occurred on May 29, 2018, the Sounding Rocket was launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The instrument has been modified from its original configuration (Hi-C 1) to observe the solar corona in a passband that peaks near 172 Angstrom and uses a new, custom-built low-noise camera. The instrument targeted Active Region 12712, and captured 78 images at a cadence of 4.4 sec (18:56:22 - 19:01:57 UT; 5 min and 35 sec observing time). The image spatial resolution varies due to quasi-periodic motion blur from the rocket; sharp images contain resolved features of at least 0.47 arcsec. There are coordinated observations from multiple ground- and space-based telescopes providing an unprecedented opportunity to observe the mass and energy coupling between the chromosphere and the corona. Details of the instrument and the data set are presented in this paper.

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