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E. Soubrié

Publications and source records attributed to E. Soubrié.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Height-dependent thermal properties of extreme-ultraviolet campfires in the quiet Sun

Small-scale impulsive energy-release events are widely considered a key ingredient of quiet-Sun coronal heating. We quantified the thermal-energy content of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) campfires, examined their impulsive heating characteristics, and investigated how their properties vary with atmospheric height. We analysed 1,468 campfires from an observing sequence on 30 May 2020 with Solar Orbiter/EUI HRIEUV at 174 A. Temperatures and emission measures were adopted from SDO/AIA diagnostics, and geometric uncertainties were explored using multiple volume models. Statistical properties were characterised using cumulative distribution functions and maximum-likelihood techniques and compared with Solar Orbiter/STIX microflares and SDO/AIA nanoflare-like events. Campfire durations show a clear dependence on height: short-duration events occur at all heights, whereas longer-lived brightenings are preferentially associated with chromospheric layers. Emitting volumes and thermal energies, by contrast, show no comparable height dependence. Background-subtracted thermal energies span approximately 10^20-10^24 erg, with rare events reaching approximately 5 x 10^24 erg. The statistically robust power-law regime extends over approximately 10^22-10^24 erg. Directly detected campfires contribute a sub-percent fraction of the canonical quiet-Sun heating requirement; approximate corrections for the detection threshold and DEM completeness could raise this contribution to a value of order a few percent. EUV campfires extend the flare energy distribution towards lower energies and provide height-resolved constraints on impulsive heating in the quiet Sun. The height dependence of event durations, combined with broadly invariant energy and volume distributions, indicates that atmospheric stratification primarily modulates cooling and dissipation timescales rather than the characteristic energy scale.

astro-ph.SR↗

Cosmological constraints from the Chandra-Planck galaxy cluster sample

We provide a new scaling relation between $Y_{\text{SZ}}$, the integrated Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal and $M_{500}^{Y_{\text{X}}}$, the cluster mass derived from X-ray observations, using a sample of clusters from the Planck Early Sunyaev-Zeldovich (ESZ) catalogue observed in X-rays by Chandra, and compare it to the results of the Planck collaboration obtained from XMM-Newton observations of a subsample of the ESZ. We calibrated a mass bias on a subset of the Planck cosmological cluster sample using published weak-lensing data from CCCP and MENeaCS, for the new scaling relation as well as that from the Planck collaboration. We propose a novel method to account for selection effects and find a mass bias of $(1-b)=0.89\pm0.04$ for the Chandra-calibrated scaling relation, and $(1-b)=0.76\pm0.04$ for the XMM-Newton-calibrated scaling relation. We apply the scaling relations we derived to the full Planck cosmological cluster sample and obtain identical cosmological constraints regardless of the X-ray sample used, with $σ_8 =0.77\pm0.02$, $Ω_m=0.31\pm0.02$, and $S_8= σ_8 \sqrt{Ω_m / 0.3}=0.78\pm0.02$. We also provide constraints with a redshift evolution of the scaling relation fitted from the data instead of fixing it to the self-similar value. We find a redshift evolution significantly deviating from the self-similar value, leading to a higher value of $S_8=0.81\pm0.02$. We compare our results to those from various cosmological probes, and find that our $S_8$ constraints are competitive with the tightest constraints from the literature. When assuming a self-similar redshift evolution, our constraints are in agreement with most late-time probes and in tension with constraints from the CMB primary anisotropies. When relaxing the assumption of redshift evolution and fitting it to the data, we find no significant tension with results from either late-time probes or the CMB.

astro-ph.CO↗

Construction of coronal hole and active region magnetohydrostatic solutions in two dimensions: Force and energy balance

Coronal holes and active regions are typical magnetic structures found in the solar atmosphere. We propose several magnetohydrostatic equilibrium solutions that are representative of these structures in two dimensions. Our models include the effect of a finite plasma-$β$ and gravity, but the distinctive feature is that we incorporate a thermal structure with properties similar to those reported by observations. We developed a semi-analytical method to compute the equilibrium configuration. Using this method, we obtain cold and under-dense plasma structures in open magnetic fields representing coronal holes, while in closed magnetic configurations, we achieve the characteristic hot and over-dense plasma arrangements of active regions. Although coronal holes and active regions seem to be antagonistic structures, we find that they can be described using a common thermal structure that depends on the flux function. In addition to the force balance, the energy balance is included in the constructed models using an a posteriori approach. From the two-dimensional computation of thermal conduction and radiative losses in our models, we infer the required heating function to achieve energy equilibrium. We find that the temperature dependence on height is an important parameter that may prevent the system from accomplishing thermal balance at certain spatial locations. The implications of these results are discussed in detail.

astro-ph.SR↗

Stereoscopy of extreme UV quiet Sun brightenings observed by Solar Orbiter/EUI

The 3D fine structure of the solar atmosphere is still not fully understood as most of the available observations are taken from a single vantage point. The goal of the paper is to study the 3D distribution of small-scale brightening events ("campfires") discovered in the EUV quiet Sun by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) aboard Solar Orbiter. We used a first commissioning data set acquired by the EUI's High Resolution EUV telescope on 30 May 2020 in the 174 Å passband and we combined it with simultaneous data taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory in a similar 171 Å passband. The two-pixel spatial resolution of the two telescopes is 400 km and 880 km, respectively, which is sufficient to identify the campfires in both data sets. The two spacecraft had an angular separation of around 31.5 degrees (essentially in heliographic longitude), which allowed for the 3D reconstruction of the campfire position. These observations represent the first time that stereoscopy was achieved for brightenings at such a small scale. Manual and automatic triangulation methods were used to characterize the campfire data. The height of the campfires is located between 1000 km and 5000 km above the photosphere and we find a good agreement between the manual and automatic methods. The internal structure of campfires is mostly unresolved by AIA; however, for a particularly large campfire, we were able to triangulate a few pixels, which are all in a narrow range between 2500 and 4500 km. The low height of EUI campfires suggests that they belong to the previously unresolved fine structure of the transition region and low corona of the quiet Sun. They are probably apexes of small-scale dynamic loops heated internally to coronal temperatures. This work demonstrates that high-resolution stereoscopy of structures in the solar atmosphere has become feasible.

astro-ph.SR↗

Star formation rates and stellar masses from machine learning

Star-formation activity is a key property to probe the structure formation and hence characterise the large-scale structures of the universe. This information can be deduced from the star formation rate (SFR) and the stellar mass (Mstar), both of which, but especially the SFR, are very complex to estimate. Determining these quantities from UV, optical, or IR luminosities relies on complex modeling and on priors on galaxy types. We propose a method based on the machine-learning algorithm Random Forest to estimate the SFR and the Mstar of galaxies at redshifts in the range 0.01<z<0.3, independent of their type. The machine-learning algorithm takes as inputs the redshift, WISE luminosities, and WISE colours in near-IR, and is trained on spectra-extracted SFR and Mstar from the SDSS MPA-JHU DR8 catalogue as outputs. We show that our algorithm can accurately estimate SFR and Mstar with scatters of sigma_SFR=0.38 dex and sigma_Mstar=0.16 dex for SFR and stellar mass, respectively, and that it is unbiased with respect to redshift or galaxy type. The full-sky coverage of the WISE satellite allows us to characterise the star-formation activity of all galaxies outside the Galactic mask with spectroscopic redshifts in the range 0.01<z<0.3. The method can also be applied to photometric-redshift catalogues, with best scatters of sigma_SFR=0.42 dex and sigma_Mstar=0.24 dex obtained in the redshift range 0.1<z<0.3.

astro-ph.GA↗

On the occurrence of thermal non-equilibrium in coronal loops

Long-period EUV pulsations, recently discovered to be common in active regions, are understood to be the coronal manifestation of thermal non-equilibrium (TNE). The active regions previously studied with EIT/SOHO and AIA/SDO indicated that long-period intensity pulsations are localized in only one or two loop bundles. The basic idea of this study is to understand why. For this purpose, we tested the response of different loop systems, using different magnetic configurations, to different stratifications and strengths of the heating. We present an extensive parameter-space study using 1D hydrodynamic simulations (1,020 in total) and conclude that the occurrence of TNE requires specific combinations of parameters. Our study shows that the TNE cycles are confined to specific ranges in parameter space. This naturally explains why only some loops undergo constant periodic pulsations over several days: since the loop geometry and the heating properties generally vary from one loop to another in an active region, only the ones in which these parameters are compatible exhibits TNE cycles. Furthermore, these parameters (heating and geometry) are likely to vary significantly over the duration of a cycle, which potentially limits the possibilities of periodic behavior. This study also confirms that long-period intensity pulsations and coronal rain are two aspects of the same phenomenon: both phenomena can occur for similar heating conditions and can appear simultaneously in the simulations.

astro-ph.SR↗

The Coronal Monsoon: Thermal Nonequilibrium Revealed by Periodic Coronal Rain

We report on the discovery of periodic coronal rain in an off-limb sequence of {\it Solar Dynamics Observatory}/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly images. The showers are co-spatial and in phase with periodic (6.6~hr) intensity pulsations of coronal loops of the sort described by Auchere et al. (2014) and Froment et al. (2015, 2017). These new observations make possible a unified description of both phenomena. Coronal rain and periodic intensity pulsations of loops are two manifestations of the same physical process: evaporation / condensation cycles resulting from a state of thermal nonequilibrium (TNE). The fluctuations around coronal temperatures produce the intensity pulsations of loops, and rain falls along their legs if thermal runaway cools the periodic condensations down and below transition-region (TR) temperatures. This scenario is in line with the predictions of numerical models of quasi-steadily and footpoint heated loops. The presence of coronal rain -- albeit non-periodic -- in several other structures within the studied field of view implies that this type of heating is at play on a large scale.

astro-ph.SR↗