arXiv subjects

D. Przybylski

Publications and source records attributed to D. Przybylski.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

1.5D investigation of the Hanle effect in the Ca I 4227 line using partial frequency redistribution. Comparison of synthetic Stokes profiles in Bifrost and MURaM-ChE rMHD models

Modeling scattering polarization in the Ca I 4227 Å line is important for diagnosing chromospheric magnetic fields. We investigate the relative influence of formation heights and magnetic fields, through the Hanle effect, on spatially averaged synthetic Stokes profiles using realistic solar atmospheres. We employ 1D vertical columns from 3D radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the solar chromosphere performed with the Bifrost and MURaM-ChE codes, and solve the 1.5D non-local thermodynamic equilibrium polarized radiative transfer equation including partial frequency redistribution and the Hanle effect. The intensity profiles from both simulations agree at line center, while MURaM-ChE exhibits enhanced wing intensity due to deeper, hotter formation regions. The polarization signals form at greater heights in MURaM-ChE than in Bifrost. In the non-magnetic case, Bifrost produces stronger line-core polarization, whereas MURaM-ChE shows enhanced wing polarization. Including the magnetic fields from the simulations results in stronger Hanle depolarization of / in Bifrost. The distinct thermal and magnetic structures at the corresponding formation heights therefore produce significantly different polarization profiles. In particular, the Hanle signatures suggest that the line-core formation region in MURaM-ChE is less strongly magnetized than that in Bifrost.

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arXiv2026

Mg II h&k spectral line properties computed using 3D radiative transfer in an enhanced network region simulated with the MURaM-ChE code

The Mg II h&k lines form in the middle to upper chromosphere and are well-suited to study the structure of the chromosphere. However, the details of their formation in the solar chromosphere are not fully understood. We aim to study the effects of 3D radiative transfer (RT) on the Mg II h&k line properties and to verify known correlations between the underlying atmosphere and spectral line features in a new model of the chromosphere. We forward model the Mg II h&k lines in 3D RT with partial frequency redistribution (PRD) in a self-consistent 3D radiative magnetohydrodynamics (rMHD) simulation with non-local-thermodynamic-equilibrium (NLTE) energy transport and non-equilibrium (NE) hydrogen ionization of an enhanced network (EN) region simulated with the chromospheric extension of MURaM (MURaM-ChE). The spatially averaged Mg II h&k spectral lines computed with 3D RT match approximately a typical IRIS observation. The peak separation is still slightly lower in the simulation. In the MURaM-ChE model, the qualitative difference between 1.5D and 3D RT results is even more pronounced than in the public Bifrost snapshot, as given in the literature. We found that this large discrepancy might partly be attributed to the horizontal velocities that are naturally included in the full 3D RT synthesis but not in typical 1.5D RT computations. We confirm that correlations between spectral line properties and the underlying atmosphere from the MURaM-ChE simulation are similar to those obtained from Bifrost, but show more scatter due to the more dynamic atmosphere. The Mg II h&k lines computed with 3D RT match the observations better in the core intensities and their distribution on the Sun compared to 1.5D computations. This underlines the importance of 3D RT in the forward modeling of Mg II h&k.

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arXiv2026

A single frequency approach to nonequilibrium modeling of the chromosphere

The solar chromosphere is a region where radiation plays a critical role in energy transfer and interacts strongly with the plasma. In this layer, strong spectral lines, such as the Lyman lines, contribute significantly to radiative energy exchange. Due to the long ionization/relaxation timescale, departures from LTE become significant in the chromosphere. Accurately modeling this layer therefore requires one to solve the non-LTE radiative transfer for the Lyman transitions. We present an updated version of the MURaM code to enable more accurate simulations of chromospheric hydrogen level populations and temperature evolution. In the previous extension, a non-LTE equation of state, collisional transitions of hydrogen, and radiative transitions of non-Lyman lines were already implemented in the code. Building on this, we have now incorporated radiative transfer for the Lyman lines to compute radiative rate coefficients and the associated radiative losses. These were used to solve the population and temperature evolution equations, rendering the system self-consistent. To reduce computational cost, a single-frequency approximation was applied to each line in the numerical solution of the radiative transfer problem. The extended model shows good agreement with reference solutions from the Lightweaver framework, accurately capturing the radiative processes associated with Lyman lines in the chromosphere. The extension brings the simulated hydrogen level populations in the deep chromosphere closer to detailed radiative balance, while those in the upper chromosphere remain significantly out of balance, consistent with the expected conditions in the real solar atmosphere. The extension enables the MURaM code to accurately capture chromospheric dynamics.

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arXiv2026

Ca ii 854.2 nm in an enhanced network region simulated with MURaM-ChE

The Ca ii 854.2 nm line is widely used to study the chromosphere of the Sun. In the quiet Sun, the spatially averaged line profile shows a red asymmetry and a redshift of the line center. It is known that the effect of isotopic splitting must be taken into account in the forward modeling to reproduce the observed asymmetry. So far, no numerical model could match an average observed line profile in terms of the line width and asymmetry. Our goal is to investigate how well a simulation computed with the chromospheric extension of the MURaM code (MURaM-ChE) reproduces the spatially averaged Ca ii 854.2 nm line profile. We aim to determine the contributions from the isotopic splitting versus the dynamics in the atmosphere to the resulting line width and asymmetry. We solve the radiative transfer problem three times, once considering only the most abundant isotope of calcium in the atmosphere, once taking six calcium isotopes into account, and finally using a single composite atom model. We find the forward modeled spatially and temporally averaged spectra to be in good agreement with an average observation of the quiet Sun. In order to match the observed line width, the simulated atmosphere must be sufficiently dynamic. The typical red asymmetry can only be reproduced by taking the isotopic splitting effect into account, as suggested in the literature.

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arXiv2025

Formation of chromospheric Fe I lines in the near ultraviolet in 1D atmospheres

In the near ultraviolet (NUV) part of the solar spectrum, there are several Fe I lines with very broad profiles, typical of chromospheric lines. These lines are largely unexplored due to the lack of high-resolution data in this region. This changed with the successful Sunrise III flight in 2024, when spectro-polarimetric data were recorded with high spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution covering a large variety of solar targets. The aim of this work is to investigate the formation of the lines and lay the groundwork for further studies. We compute the spectrum of the lines at 358.12 nm, 371.99 nm, 406.36 nm, and 407.17 nm emerging from the standard 1D FAL-atmospheres using the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) radiative transfer code RH. We find that the lines are affected by overionization in the wings, but have line cores strongly affected by scattering. The line cores form well into the chromosphere in the tested atmosphere models except the colder FALX model where the line core forms in the temperature minimum (which lies at traditional chromospheric heights). In the presence of a vertical magnetic field, the Stokes $V$ signal is multi-lobed. The profile can be decomposed into two broad photospheric lobes and two sharper lobes forming in the flanks of the chromospheric line core. We have investigated the properties of four lines of Fe I that form in the lower chromosphere. The results provide a basic understanding of the formation of the lines, which will be useful for later analysis of formation in 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations and an eventual investigation into their diagnostic potential.

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arXiv2025

Structure and dynamics of the internetwork solar chromosphere: results of a small-scale dynamo simulation

The heating and structure of the solar chromosphere depends on the underlying magnetic field, among other parameters. The lowest magnetic flux of the solar atmosphere is found in the quiet Sun internetwork and is thought to be provided by the small-scale dynamo (SSD) process. We aim to understand the chromospheric structure and dynamics in a simulation with purely SSD generated magnetic fields. We perform a 3D radiation-magnetohydrodynamic (rMHD) simulation of the solar atmosphere, including the necessary physics to simulate the solar chromosphere. No magnetic field is imposed beyond that generated by an SSD process. We analyse the magnetic field in the chromosphere, and the resulting energy balance. Plasma at chromospheric temperatures reaches high into the atmosphere, with small, transient regions reaching coronal temperatures. An average Poynting flux of $5\times10^6~\mathrm{erg\;cm}^{-3}$\;s$^{-1}$ is found at the base of the chromosphere. The magnetic field in the chromosphere falls off more slowly with height than predicted by a potential field extrapolation from the radial component of the photospheric field. Starting in the middle chromosphere, the magnetic energy density is an order of magnitude larger than the kinetic energy density and, in the upper chromosphere, also larger than the thermal energy density. Nonetheless, even in the high chromosphere, the plasma beta in shock fronts and low-field regions can locally reach values above unity. The interactions between shocks and the magnetic field are essential to understanding the dynamics of the internetwork chromosphere. The SSD generated magnetic fields are strong enough to dominate the energy balance in the mid-to-upper chromosphere. The energy flux into the chromosphere is $8.16\times 10^{6}~\mathrm{erg\;cm^{-2}\;s^{-1}}$, larger than the canonical values required to heat the quiet sun chromosphere and corona.

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arXiv2024

Mg ii h&k spectra of an enhanced network region simulated with the MURaM-ChE code. Results using 1.5D synthesis

The Mg ii h&k lines are key diagnostics of the solar chromosphere. They are sensitive to the temperature, density, and non-thermal velocities in the chromosphere. The average Mg ii h&k line profiles arising from previous 3D chromospheric simulations are too narrow. We study the formation and properties of the Mg ii h&k lines in a model atmosphere. We also compare the average spectrum, peak intensity, and peak separation of Mg ii k with a representative observation taken by IRIS. We use a model based on the recently developed non-equilibrium version of the radiative magneto-hydrodynamics code MURaM, in combination with forward modeling using the radiative transfer code RH1.5D to obtain synthetic spectra. Our model resembles an enhanced network region created by using an evolved MURaM quiet sun simulation and adding a similar imposed large-scale bipolar magnetic field as in the public Bifrost snapshot of a bipolar magnetic feature. The line width and the peak separation of the spatially averaged spectrum of the Mg ii h&k lines from the MURaM simulation are close to a representative observation from the quiet sun which also includes network fields. However, we find the synthesized line width to be still slightly narrower than in the observation. We find that velocities in the chromosphere play a dominant role in the broadening of the spectral lines. While the average synthetic spectrum also shows a good match with the observations in the pseudo continuum between the two emission lines, the peak intensities are higher in the modeled spectrum. This discrepancy may partly be due to the larger magnetic flux density in the simulation than in the considered observations but also due to the 1.5D radiative transfer approximation. Our findings show that strong maximum velocity differences or turbulent velocities in the chromosphere are necessary to reproduce the observed line widths.

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arXiv2022

Small-scale dynamo in cool main sequence stars. II. The effect of metallicity

All cool main sequence stars including our Sun are thought to have magnetic fields. Observations of the Sun revealed that even in quiet regions small-scale turbulent magnetic fields are present. Simulations further showed that such magnetic fields affect the subsurface and photospheric structure, and thus the radiative transfer and emergent flux. Since small-scale turbulent magnetic fields on other stars cannot be directly observed, it is imperative to study their effects on the near surface layers numerically. Until recently comprehensive three-dimensional simulations capturing the effect of small-scale turbulent magnetic fields only exists for the solar case. A series of investigations extending SSD simulations for other stars has been started. Here we aim to examine small-scale turbulent magnetic fields in stars of solar effective temperature but different metallicity. We investigate the properties of three-dimensional simulations of the magneto-convection in boxes covering the upper convection zone and photosphere carried out with the MURaM code for metallicity values of $ \rm M/H = \{-1.0, 0.0, 0.5\}$ with and without a small-scale-dynamo. We find that small-scale turbulent magnetic fields enhanced by a small-scale turbulent dynamo noticeably affect the subsurface dynamics and significantly change the flow velocities in the photosphere. Moreover, significantly stronger magnetic field strengths are present in the convection zone for low metallicity. Whereas, at the optical surface the averaged vertical magnetic field ranges from 64G for M/H = 0.5 to 85G for M/H = -1.0.

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arXiv2022

Chromospheric Extension of the MURaM Code

Detailed numerical models of chromosphere and corona are required to understand the heating of the solar atmosphere. An accurate treatment of the solar chromosphere is complicated by the effects arising from Non Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (NLTE) radiative transfer. A small number of strong, highly scattering lines dominate the cooling and heating in the chromosphere. Additionally, the recombination times of ionised hydrogen are longer than the dynamical timescales, requiring a non-equilibrium (NE) treatment of hydrogen ionisation. The MURaM code is extended to include the physical process required for accurate simulation of the solar chromosphere, as implemented in the Bifrost code. This includes a time-dependent treatment of hydrogen ionisation, a scattering multi-group radiation transfer scheme and approximations for NLTE radiative cooling. The inclusion of NE and NLTE physics has a large impact on the structure of the chromosphere; the NE treatment of hydrogen ionisation leads to a higher ionisation fraction and enhanced populations in the first excited state throughout cold inter-shock regions of the chromosphere. Additionally this prevents hydrogen ioniation from buffering energy fluctuations, leading to hotter shocks and cooler inter-shock regions. The hydrogen populations in the ground and first excited state are enhanced by $10^2-10^3$ in the upper chromosphere and up to $10^9$ near the transition region. Including the necessary NLTE physics leads to significant differences in chromospheric structure and dynamics. The thermodynamics and hydrogen populations calculated using the extended version of the MURaM code are consistent with previous non-equilibrium simulations. The electron number and temperature calculated using the non-equilibrium treatment of the chromosphere are required to accurately synthesise chromospheric spectral lines.

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arXiv2021

A solar coronal loop in a box: Energy generation and heating

Coronal loops are the basic building block of the upper solar atmosphere. Comprehending how these are energized, structured, and evolve is key to understanding stellar coronae. Here we investigate how the energy to heat the loop is generated by photospheric magneto-convection, transported into the upper atmosphere, and how the internal structure of a coronal loop forms. In a 3D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) model, we study an isolated coronal loop rooted with both footpoints in a shallow layer within the convection zone using the MURaM code. To resolve its internal structure, we limited the computational domain to a rectangular box containing a single coronal loop as a straightened magnetic flux tube. Field-aligned heat conduction, gray radiative transfer in the photosphere and chromosphere, and optically thin radiative losses in the corona were taken into account. The footpoints were allowed to interact self-consistently with the granulation surrounding them. The loop is heated by a Poynting flux that is self-consistently generated through small-scale motions within individual magnetic concentrations in the photosphere. Turbulence develops in the upper layers of the atmosphere as a response to the footpoint motions. We see little sign of heating by large-scale braiding of magnetic flux tubes from different photospheric concentrations at a given footpoint. The synthesized emission, as it would be observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly or the X-ray Telescope, reveals transient bright strands that form in response to the heating events. Overall, our model roughly reproduces the properties and evolution of the plasma as observed within coronal loops. With this model we can build a coherent picture of how the energy flux to heat the upper atmosphere is generated near the solar surface and how this process drives and governs the heating and dynamics of a coronal loop.

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arXiv2021

Efficient numerical treatment of ambipolar and Hall drift as hyperbolic system

Partially ionized plasmas, such as the solar chromosphere, require a generalized Ohm's law including the effects of ambipolar and Hall drift. While both describe transport processes that arise from the multifluid equations and are therefore of hyperbolic nature, they are often incorporated in models as a diffusive, i.e. parabolic process. While the formulation as such is easy to include in standard MHD models, the resulting diffusive time-step constraints do require often a computationally more expensive implicit treatment or super-time-stepping approaches. In this paper we discuss an implementation that retains the hyperbolic nature and allows for an explicit integration with small computational overhead. In the case of ambipolar drift, this formulation arises naturally by simply retaining a time derivative of the drift velocity that is typically omitted. This alone leads to time-step constraints that are comparable to the native MHD time-step constraint for a solar setup including the region from photosphere to lower solar corona. We discuss an accelerated treatment that can further reduce time-step constraints if necessary. In the case of Hall drift we propose a hyperbolic formulation that is numerically similar to that for the ambipolar drift and we show that the combination of both can be applied to simulations of the solar chromosphere at minimal computational expense.

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arXiv2021

Magnetic Imaging of the Outer Solar Atmosphere (MImOSA): Unlocking the driver of the dynamics in the upper solar atmosphere

The magnetic activity of the Sun directly impacts the Earth and human life. Likewise, other stars will have an impact on the habitability of planets orbiting these host stars. The lack of information on the magnetic field in the higher atmospheric layers hampers our progress in understanding solar magnetic activity. Overcoming this limitation would allow us to address four paramount long-standing questions: (1) How does the magnetic field couple the different layers of the atmosphere, and how does it transport energy? (2) How does the magnetic field structure, drive and interact with the plasma in the chromosphere and upper atmosphere? (3) How does the magnetic field destabilise the outer solar atmosphere and thus affect the interplanetary environment? (4) How do magnetic processes accelerate particles to high energies? New ground-breaking observations are needed to address these science questions. We suggest a suite of three instruments that far exceed current capabilities in terms of spatial resolution, light-gathering power, and polarimetric performance: (a) A large-aperture UV-to-IR telescope of the 1-3 m class aimed mainly to measure the magnetic field in the chromosphere by combining high spatial resolution and high sensitivity. (b) An extreme-UV-to-IR coronagraph that is designed to measure the large-scale magnetic field in the corona with an aperture of about 40 cm. (c) An extreme-UV imaging polarimeter based on a 30 cm telescope that combines high throughput in the extreme UV with polarimetry to connect the magnetic measurements of the other two instruments. This mission to measure the magnetic field will unlock the driver of the dynamics in the outer solar atmosphere and thereby greatly advance our understanding of the Sun and the heliosphere.

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arXiv2018

Probing sunspots with two-skip time-distance helioseismology

Previous helioseismology of sunspots has been sensitive to both the structural and magnetic aspects of sunspot structure. We aim to develop a technique that is insensitive to the magnetic component so the two aspects can be more readily separated. We study waves reflected almost vertically from the underside of a sunspot. Time-distance helioseismology was used to measure travel times for the waves. Ray theory and a detailed sunspot model were used to calculate travel times for comparison. It is shown that these large distance waves are insensitive to the magnetic field in the sunspot. The largest travel time differences for any solar phenomena are observed. With sufficient modeling effort, these should lead to better understanding of sunspot structure.

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arXiv2018

Inversions of synthetic umbral flashes: effects of the scanning time on the inferred atmospheres

The use of instruments that record narrow band images at selected wavelengths is a common approach in solar observations. They allow the scanning of a spectral line by sampling the Stokes profiles with 2D images at each line position, but require a compromise between spectral resolution and temporal cadence. We evaluate the impact of the time-dependent acquisition of different wavelengths on the inversion of spectropolarimetric profiles from chromospheric lines during umbral flashes. Simulations of non-linear wave propagation in a sunspot were performed with the code MANCHA. Synthetic Stokes parameters in the Ca II 8542 A line in NLTE were computed for an umbral flash using the code NICOLE. Artificial profiles with the same wavelength coverage and temporal cadence from reported observations were constructed and inverted. The inferred atmospheric stratifications were compared with the original models. The inferred atmospheres provide a reasonable characterization of the thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere during most of the phases of the umbral flash. Only at the early stages of the flash, when the shock wave reaches the formation height of the line, the Stokes profiles present apparent wavelength shifts and other spurious deformations. These features are misinterpreted by the inversion code, which can return unrealistic atmospheric models from a good fit of the Stokes profiles. The misguided results include flashed atmospheres with strong downflows, even though the simulation exhibits upflows during the umbral flash, and large variations in the magnetic field strength. Our analyses validate the inversion of Stokes profiles acquired by sequentially scanning certain selected wavelengths of a line profile, even in the case of rapidly-changing events such as umbral flashes. However, the inversions are unreliable during a short period at the development phase of the flash.

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arXiv2016

Heating of the partially ionized solar chromosphere by waves in magnetic structures

In this paper, we show a "proof of concept" of the heating mechanism of the solar chromosphere due to wave dissipation caused by the effects of partial ionization. Numerical modeling of non-linear wave propagation in a magnetic flux tube, embedded in the solar atmosphere, is performed by solving a system of single-fluid quasi-MHD equations, which take into account the ambipolar term from the generalized Ohm's law. It is shown that perturbations caused by magnetic waves can be effectively dissipated due to ambipolar diffusion. The energy input by this mechanism is continuous and shown to be more efficient than dissipation of static currents, ultimately leading to chromospheric temperature increase in magnetic structures.

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arXiv2015

Spectropolarimetrically accurate magnetohydrostatic sunspot model for forward modelling in helioseismology

We present a technique to construct a spectropolarimetrically accurate magneto-hydrostatic model of a large-scale solar magnetic field concentration, mimicking a sunspot. Using the constructed model we perform a simulation of acoustic wave propagation, conversion and absorption in the solar interior and photosphere with the sunspot embedded into it. With the $6173\mathrmÅ$ magnetically sensitive photospheric absorption line of neutral iron, we calculate observable quantities such as continuum intensities, Doppler velocities, as well as full Stokes vector for the simulation at various positions at the solar disk, and analyse the influence of non-locality of radiative transport in the solar photosphere on helioseismic measurements. Bisector shapes were used to perform multi-height observations. The differences in acoustic power at different heights within the line formation region at different positions at the solar disk were simulated and characterised. An increase in acoustic power in the simulated observations of the sunspot umbra away from the solar disk centre was confirmed as the slow magneto-acoustic wave.

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arXiv2015

Directional Time-Distance Probing of Model Sunspot Atmospheres

A crucial feature not widely accounted for in local helioseismology is that surface magnetic regions actually open a window from the interior into the solar atmosphere, and that the seismic waves leak through this window, reflect high in the atmosphere, and then re-enter the interior to rejoin the seismic wave field normally confined there. In a series of recent numerical studies using translation invariant atmospheres, we utilised a "directional time-distance helioseismology" measurement scheme to study the implications of the returning fast and Alfvén waves higher up in the solar atmosphere on the seismology at the photosphere (Cally & Moradi 2013; Moradi & Cally 2014). In this study, we extend our directional time-distance analysis to more realistic sunspot-like atmospheres to better understand the direct effects of the magnetic field on helioseismic travel-time measurements in sunspots. In line with our previous findings, we uncover a distinct frequency-dependant directional behaviour in the travel-time measurements, consistent with the signatures of MHD mode conversion. We found this to be the case regardless of the sunspot field strength or depth of its Wilson depression. We also isolated and analysed the direct contribution from purely thermal perturbations to the measured travel times, finding that waves propagating in the umbra are much more sensitive to the underlying thermal effects of the sunspot.

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arXiv2014

Centre-to-limb spectro-polarimetric diagnostics of simulated solar photospheric magneto-convection: signatures of photospheric Alfven waves

Using numerical simulations of the magnetised solar photosphere carried out with the radiative magneto-hydrodynamic code, MURaM, and detailed spectro-polarimetric diagnostics of the simulated photospheric 6302A FeI line, spectro-polarimetric signatures of Alfven waves in magnetised intergranular lanes of the simulated solar photosphere were analysed at different positions at the solar disk. The torsional Alfven waves in the intergranular lanes are horizontal plasma motions, which do not have a thermal perturbation counterpart. We find signatures of Alfven waves as small-scale line profile Doppler shifts and Stokes-V area asymmetry enhancements in the simulated off-disk centre observations. These photospheric features disappear when the simulated observations are degraded with a telescope PSF similar to the one of Hinode. We analyse the possibilities for direct observations and confirmation of Alfven wave presence in the solar photosphere.

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