Flare differentially rotates sunspot on Sun's surface

Liu, C., Xu, Y., Cao, W., Deng, N., Lee, J., Hudson, H. S. , Gary, D. E., Wang, J., Jing, J. and Wang, H. (2016) Flare differentially rotates sunspot on Sun's surface. Nature Communications, 7, 13104. (doi: 10.1038/ncomms13104) (PMID:27721463) (PMCID:PMC5062561)

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Abstract

Sunspots are concentrations of magnetic field visible on the solar surface (photosphere). It was considered implausible that solar flares, as resulted from magnetic reconnection in the tenuous corona, would cause a direct perturbation of the dense photosphere involving bulk motion. Here we report the sudden flare-induced rotation of a sunspot using the unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution of the 1.6 m New Solar Telescope, supplemented by magnetic data from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It is clearly observed that the rotation is non-uniform over the sunspot: as the flare ribbon sweeps across, its different portions accelerate (up to ∼50° h−1) at different times corresponding to peaks of flare hard X-ray emission. The rotation may be driven by the surface Lorentz-force change due to the back reaction of coronal magnetic restructuring and is accompanied by a downward Poynting flux. These results have direct consequences for our understanding of energy and momentum transportation in the flare-related phenomena.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:We thank the BBSO, Fermi, GOES and SDO/HMI teams for providing the data. The BBSO operation is supported by NJIT, US NSF AGS 1250818 and NASA NNX13AG14G grants, and the NST operation is partly supported by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and Seoul National University, and by the strategic priority research programme of CAS with Grant Number XDB09000000. This work is supported by NASA under LWSTRT grants NNX13AF76G and NNX13AG13G, and HGI grants NNX14AC12G and NNX16AF72G, and by NSF under grants AGS 1250818, 1348513, 1408703 and 1539791. J.L. is supported by the BK21 Plus Program (21A20131111123) funded by the Ministry of Education (MOE, Korea) and National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), and also by NRF-2012 R1A2A1A 03670387. This work uses the DAVE/DAVE4VM codes written and developed by P.W. Schuck at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Hudson, Dr Hugh
Authors: Liu, C., Xu, Y., Cao, W., Deng, N., Lee, J., Hudson, H. S., Gary, D. E., Wang, J., Jing, J., and Wang, H.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
Journal Name:Nature Communications
Publisher:Nature Research
ISSN:2041-1723
ISSN (Online):2041-1723
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2016 The Authors
First Published:First published in Nature Communications 7:13104
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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