Chromospheric Acoustic Oscillations in Active Flaring Regions

Abstract:

Chromospheric p-mode oscillations are studied in Hα to obtain helioseismic information regarding the local structural conditions around highly magnetic regions such as sunspots. Solar flares commonly occur in active regions where these sunspots exist therefore boosting the p-mode power. In our current study of analyzing p-modes in the chromosphere we study the time evolution of acoustic p-mode oscillation data taken from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) Hα, and investigate the p-modes across the frequency band (1 < ν < 8.33 mHz). This study entails three active regions directly over sunspots, with accompanying flaring activity from two solar flares, occurring on June 13th and July 12th, 2012. Our analysis utilizes time series data to create Fourier power spectra of individual pixels spatially resolved around the flare region, to study the frequency bands. We then study how the frequency distribution evolves temporally by constructing a Power Map Movie (PMM) of the regions. From these PMMs we can take a survey of the chromospheric oscillations for each frequency band. We found that the intensity of the flare has an effect on the behavior of the p-modes within different frequency bands. The suppression of power was observed in dark anomalous structures within the PMMs and in other regions there was an observed boost in power due to flaring activity.