arXiv subjects

Y. Kawabata

Publications and source records attributed to Y. Kawabata.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Origin of small-scale evaporation flows deep in the chromosphere during a solar flare

Flares are caused by an abrupt release of magnetic energy in the solar atmosphere. Plasma heated to well over 10 MK filling the post-flare corona originates from a rapid heating and ablation of the cooler chromospheric material. This chromospheric evaporation is thought to be facilitated primarily by nonthermal electrons impinging on to the lower atmosphere. Questions on when and where in the chromosphere these upflows originate, however, are not fully resolved. Here we report on unprecedented high-resolution observations of an M-class flare recorded by the Sunrise Ultraviolet Spectropolarimeter and Imager on board the balloon-borne SUNRISE observatory, that reveal highly structured upflows on spatial scales of ~100 km originating deep in the chromosphere. The flows even precede the onset of nonthermal electrons by about 10 minutes and last through the impulsive phase of the flare. Our observations shed new light on the lower atmospheric heating and mass circulation in flares that are challenging to reconcile with the standard solar flare model.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

The Sunrise Chromospheric Infrared Spectro-Polarimeter SCIP: an instrument for SUNRISE III

The Sunrise balloon-borne solar observatory is equipped with a one-meter aperture optical telescope, offering a unique platform for uninterrupted seeing-free observations across ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths from altitudes higher than 33 km. For the third flight of the upgraded Sunrise observatory conducted in 2024, now called Sunrise III, a new spectro-polarimeter called the Sunrise Chromospheric Infrared spectroPolarimeter (SCIP) was developed for observing near-infrared wavelength ranges around 770 nm and 850 nm. These wavelength ranges contain many spectral lines, including two of the Ca II infrared triplet, K I D1 and D2 lines, and multiple Fe I lines, that are sensitive to solar magnetic fields and velocities in the photosphere and chromosphere. SCIP consists of a grating spectrograph in which polarimetric measurements are conducted using a rotating waveplate as a modulator and polarizing beam splitters placed in front of the cameras. The spatial and spectral resolutions are 0.21" and 1x10^5, respectively, and a polarimetric sensitivity of 0.03% (1sigma) of the continuum intensity is achieved with a 10 s integration time per a resolution element. To achieve high-precision detection of small polarization signals, we carefully designed the optical and mechanical systems, polarization components, control electronics, and onboard data processing. Together with the other post-focus instrumentation developed for Sunrise III, the Sunrise Ultraviolet Spectropolarimeter and Imager (SUSI) and the visible imaging spectro-polarimeter Tunable Magnetograph (TuMag), SCIP provides novel observations that help elucidate energy transfer and time-dependent phenomena across the solar photosphere and chromosphere.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2020

Extrapolation of Three-dimensional Magnetic Field Structure in Flare-productive Active Regions with Different Initial Conditions

The nonlinear force-free field (NLFFF) modeling has been extensively used as a tool to infer three-dimensional (3D) magnetic field structure. In this study, the dependency of the NLFFF calculation with respect to the initial guess of the 3D magnetic field is investigated. While major part of the previous studies used potential field as the initial guess in the NLFFF modeling, we adopt the linear force-free fields with different constant force-free alpha as the initial guesses. This method enables us to investigate how unique the magnetic field obtained by the NLFFF extrapolation with respect to the initial guess is. The dependence of the initial condition of the NLFFF extrapolation is smaller in the strong magnetic field region. Therefore, the magnetic field at the lower height ($< 10$ Mm) tends to be less affected by the initial condition (correlation coefficient C>0.9 with different initial condition), although the Lorentz force is concentrated at the lower height.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2019

Chromospheric polarimetry through multi-line observations of the 850 nm spectral region III: Chromospheric jets driven by twisted magnetic fields

We investigate the diagnostic potential of the spectral lines at 850 nm for understanding the magnetism of the lower atmosphere. For that purpose, we use a newly developed 3D simulation of a chromospheric jet to check the sensitivity of the spectral lines to this phenomenon as well as our ability to infer the atmospheric information through spectropolarimetric inversions of noisy synthetic data. We start comparing the benefits of inverting the entire spectrum at 850 nm versus only the Ca II 8542 A spectral line. We found a better match of the input atmosphere for the former case, mainly at lower heights. However, the results at higher layers were not accurate. After several tests, we determined that we need to weight more the chromospheric lines than the photospheric ones in the computation of the goodness of the fit. The new inversion configuration allows us to obtain better fits and consequently more accurate physical parameters. Therefore, to extract the most from multi-line inversions, a proper set of weights needs to be estimated. Besides that, we conclude again that the lines at 850 nm, or a similar arrangement with Ca II 8542 A plus Zeeman sensitive photospheric lines, poses the best observing configuration for examining the thermal and magnetic properties of the lower solar atmosphere.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2018

Statistical Relation between Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections with Respect to Sigmoidal Structures in Active Regions

Statistical dependencies among features of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar flares, and sigmoidal structures in soft-X-ray images were investigated. We applied analysis methods to all the features in the same way in order to investigate the reproducibility of the correlations among them, which may be found from the combination of previous statistical studies. The samples of 211 M-class and X-class flares, which were observed between 2006 and 2015 by Hinode/X-ray telescope, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph, and GOES, were examined statistically. Five kinds of analysis were performed: Occurrence rate analysis, linear-correlation analysis, association analysis, the Kolmogorov--Smirnov test, and Anderson-Darling test. The analyses show three main results. First, the sigmoidal structure and long duration events (LDEs) has stronger dependency on the CME occurrence than large X-ray class events in on-disk events. Second, for the limb events, the significant dependency exists between LDEs and CME occurrence, and between X-ray class and CME occurrence. Third, there existed 32.4% of on-disk flare events, which had sigmoidal structure and were not accompanied by CMEs. However, the occurrence probability of CMEs without sigmoidal structures is very small, 8.8 %, in on-disk events. While the first and second results are consistent with previous studies, we newly provided the difference between the on-disk events and limb events. The third result that non-sigmoidal regions produce less eruptive events is also different from previous results. We suggest that sigmoidal structures in soft X-ray images will be a helpful feature for CME prediction regarding on-disk flare events.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2018

Study of the polarization produced by the Zeeman effect in the solar Mg I b lines

The next generation of solar observatories aim to understand the magnetism of the solar chromosphere. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the polarimetric signatures of chromospheric spectral lines. For this purpose, we here examine the suitability of the three Fraunhofer Mg I b1, b2, and b4 lines at 5183.6, 5172.7, and 5167.3 A, respectively. We start by describing a simplified atomic model of only 6 levels and 3 line transitions for computing the atomic populations of the 3p-4s (multiplet number 2) levels involved in the Mg I b line transitions assuming non-local thermodynamic conditions and considering only the Zeeman effect using the field-free approximation. We test this simplified atom against more complex ones finding that, although there are differences in the computed profiles, they are small compared with the advantages provided by the simple atom in terms of speed and robustness. After comparing the three Mg I lines, we conclude that the most capable one is the b2 line as b1 forms at similar heights and always show weaker polarization signals while b4 is severely blended with photospheric lines. We also compare Mg I b2 with the K I D1 and Ca II 8542 A lines finding that the former is sensitive to the atmospheric parameters at heights that are in between those covered by the latter two lines. This makes Mg I b2 an excellent candidate for future multi-line observations that aim to seamlessly infer the thermal and magnetic properties of different features in the lower solar atmosphere.

astro-ph.SR↗