arXiv subjects

Timothy J. Duckenfield

Publications and source records attributed to Timothy J. Duckenfield.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Multi-height Identification of Sausage and Fluting Eigenmodes in a Solar Pore

Magnetic pores are compact, strongly magnetised waveguides in the lower solar atmosphere and therefore provide favourable conditions for identifying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave modes. Earlier seeing-free observations revealed concurrent sausage, kink, and fluting modes in photospheric pores, but only at a single sampled layer. In this Letter, we exploit the dense spectral sampling of the near-ultraviolet 327-329 nm window observed by the Sunrise-III UV Spectropolarimeter and Imager (SUSI) to investigate how pore wave modes behave across multiple photospheric and low-chromospheric heights spanning roughly 500 km. We analyse ~75 min of a Sunrise-III/SUSI time series containing a small solar pore. From eight selected spectral lines sampling different estimated formation heights, we identify the pore boundary at each line and time step and apply proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) to the boundary oscillations. In all eight lines, the first POD mode is consistently identified as an axisymmetric sausage mode, with dominant power at ~1-2 mHz, and carries the dominant normalised eigenvalue fraction, typically about 66-86%, while the second mode is a fluting mode with azimuthal wave number m = 2, dominant at ~2-3.5 mHz, and contributes about 4-10%. Cross-line wavelet phase analysis of the temporal coefficients shows that the sausage mode remains close to zero phase difference across the sampled heights, consistent with standing or near-standing behaviour, whereas the fluting mode displays a modest but systematic increase in phase with height, reaching about 50 degrees, indicative of an upward-propagating component. These observations provide the first multi-height identification and phase characterisation of sausage and fluting modes inferred from pore-boundary oscillations.

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arXiv2026

Magnetically Structured Oscillatory Power Along an Active-Region Transect in Near-UV Sunrise-III/SUSI Spectroscopy

We present a multi-line characterisation of how oscillatory power is organised across distinct magnetic environments in an active region using seeing-free, stratospheric near-ultraviolet spectroscopy from the Sunrise-III UV Spectropolarimeter and Imager (SUSI). A two-hour time series of short raster scans in the line-rich 327-329 nm window samples along a single transect that contains the following regions: weak magnetic-field surroundings, a plage, a sunspot, and a pore. From a set of 30 selected, relatively unblended absorption lines, we extract line-core Doppler-velocity time series and compute Morlet-wavelet refined global spectra from which we form band-integrated power maps for three frequency bands (2-4, 4-6, and 6-12 mHz). The stacked, line-resolved maps reveal a clear environment-dependent redistribution of power: 2-4 mHz power is strongest in the weak-field/plage segments but is commonly suppressed in the umbra and pore cores, while 4-6 mHz and 6-12 mHz power becomes relatively enhanced in the strongest-field regions, with line-dependent behaviour in the penumbra and plage. Across the line ensemble, this broad frequency structuring is coherent, but the detailed spatial distribution and relative band ranking are not identical from line to line - even among spectral lines with comparable effective formation depths - demonstrating clear line dependence. This novel result implies that single-line measurements may miss secondary components of the local wave spectrum because different lines weight co-existing perturbations and modes differently; therefore, the SUSI near-UV window provides a uniquely diagnostic-rich mapping of oscillations, offering leverage that is difficult to obtain with traditional one- or two-line approaches.

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arXiv2026

The Influence of Opacity on Inferred MHD Wave Signatures in the Lower Solar Atmosphere

Magnetohydrodynamic wave activity in small-scale magnetic structures, such as solar pores, provides key insights into energy transport in the lower solar atmosphere. This study presents high-resolution observations of ten solar pores contained within a 43 x 43 Mm$^2$ field of view, obtained with the CRISP instrument at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. We investigate the temporal behaviour of the line-of-sight velocity (vlos) and magnetic field (blos) oscillations within the pore structures. Using SIR inversions, we analyse the oscillatory signals at multiple optical depths (log $τ$ levels) to assess how variations in geometric height (z) and temperature relate to the observed blos fluctuations. Our results reveal that higher-frequency oscillations (> 6 mHz) exhibit strong coherences with in-phase fluctuations between blos and z across atmospheric layers, consistent with upward-propagating magneto-acoustic waves. In contrast, coherent lower-frequency oscillations display significant phase differences, which may arise from opacity effects contaminating the inversion response. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for opacity effects when interpreting magnetic oscillations, with direct implications for forthcoming high-precision magnetic diagnostics from facilities such as DKIST.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

Adaptive multi-line fitting for stable line-core intensity and Doppler velocity

Next-generation solar spectrographs increasingly record dense wavelength windows in which tens to hundreds of spectral lines are sampled at each spatial location and time step. This expands the scope for multi-line, multi-height diagnostics of magnetohydrodynamic motions, but also raises a practical challenge: deriving stable line-core intensity and line-of-sight velocity time series when profiles evolve rapidly, become asymmetric, blend, or develop multi-lobed cores. Common fast estimators can perform well for simple, isolated absorption lines, yet can intermittently misidentify the core in crowded or morphologically complex cases. Even infrequent mis-tracking can leave step-like artefacts that redistribute power and bias spectral, phase, and coherence measures used in wave and dynamics analyses. We introduce LineFit, a fully reproducible adaptive multi-line fitting approach tailored to dense-window spectroscopy. LineFit models each line locally with bounded non-linear least-squares fits to a Voigt-family profile, including an asymmetric-Voigt option to accommodate unequal wing broadening, and incorporates close-pair ownership control together with conservative, per-line window adaptation and split-core-aware handling. Using a synthetic time series with unambiguous ground truth, we benchmark LineFit against four widely used fast baselines and assess both instantaneous centre errors and downstream time-series diagnostics. Several fast methods remain competitive for many lines, whereas LineFit is most robust in key stress cases involving intermittently split-core profiles and correspondingly yields power spectra that agree most closely with the truth. We also demonstrate a proof-of-principle that benchmarks hybrid acceleration of the LineFit software via supervised emulation, offering at least three orders-of-magnitude improvement in processing time.

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arXiv2022

Probing the Density Fine Structuring of the Solar Corona with Comet Lovejoy

The passage of sungrazing comets in the solar corona can be a powerful tool to probe the local plasma properties. Here, we carry out a study of the striae pattern appearing in the tail of sungrazing Comet Lovejoy, as observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the inbound and outbound phases of the comet orbit. We consider the images in EUV in the 171 Å bandpass, where emission from oxygen ions O$^{4+}$ and O$^{5+}$ is found. The striae are described as due to a beam of ions injected along the local magnetic field, with the initial beam velocity decaying because of collisions. Also, ion collisional diffusion contributes to ion propagation. Both the collision time for velocity decay and the diffusion coefficient for spatial spreading depend on the ambient plasma density. A probabilistic description of the ion beam density along the magnetic field is developed, where the beam position is given by the velocity decay and the spreading of diffusing ions is described by a Gaussian probability distribution. Profiles of emission intensity along the magnetic field are computed and compared with the profiles along the striae observed by AIA, showing a good agreement for most considered striae. The inferred coronal densities are then compared with a hydrostatic model of the solar corona. The results confirm that the coronal density is strongly spatially structured.

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