208 research outputs found
The formation of IRIS diagnostics I. A quintessential model atom of Mg II and general formation properties of the Mg II h&k lines
NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) space mission will study
how the solar atmosphere is energized. IRIS contains an imaging spectrograph
that covers the Mg II h&k lines as well as a slit-jaw imager centered at Mg II
k. Understanding the observations will require forward modeling of Mg II h&k
line formation from 3D radiation-MHD models. This paper is the first in a
series where we undertake this forward modeling. We discuss the atomic physics
pertinent to h&k line formation, present a quintessential model atom that can
be used in radiative transfer computations and discuss the effect of partial
redistribution (PRD) and 3D radiative transfer on the emergent line profiles.
We conclude that Mg II h&k can be modeled accurately with a 4-level plus
continuum Mg II model atom. Ideally radiative transfer computations should be
done in 3D including PRD effects. In practice this is currently not possible. A
reasonable compromise is to use 1D PRD computations to model the line profile
up to and including the central emission peaks, and use 3D transfer assuming
complete redistribution to model the central depression.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted for Ap
RH 1.5D: a massively parallel code for multi-level radiative transfer with partial frequency redistribution and Zeeman polarisation
The emergence of three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of
stellar atmospheres has sparked a need for efficient radiative transfer codes
to calculate detailed synthetic spectra. We present RH 1.5D, a massively
parallel code based on the RH code and capable of performing Zeeman polarised
multi-level non-local thermodynamical equilibrium (NLTE) calculations with
partial frequency redistribution for an arbitrary amount of chemical species.
The code calculates spectra from 3D, 2D or 1D atmospheric models on a
column-by-column basis (or 1.5D). While the 1.5D approximation breaks down in
the cores of very strong lines in an inhomogeneous environment, it is
nevertheless suitable for a large range of scenarios and allows for faster
convergence with finer control over the iteration of each simulation column.
The code scales well to at least tens of thousands of CPU cores, and is
publicly available. In the present work we briefly describe its inner workings,
strategies for convergence optimisation, its parallelism, and some possible
applications.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. A&A in press. Updated version reflects changes in
latest proof
The formation of IRIS diagnostics II. The formation of the Mg II h&k lines in the solar atmosphere
NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) small explorer mission
will study how the solar atmosphere is energized. IRIS contains an imaging
spectrograph that covers the Mg II h&k lines as well as a slit-jaw imager
centered at Mg II k. Understanding the observations requires forward modeling
of Mg II h&k line formation from 3D radiation-MHD models.
We compute the vertically emergent h&k intensity from a snapshot of a dynamic
3D radiation-MHD model of the solar atmosphere, and investigate which
diagnostic information about the atmosphere is contained in the synthetic line
profiles. We find that the Doppler shift of the central line depression
correlates strongly with the vertical velocity at optical depth unity, which is
typically located less than 200 km below the transition region (TR). By
combining the Doppler shifts of the h and the k line we can retrieve the sign
of the velocity gradient just below the TR. The intensity in the central line
depression is anticorrelated with the formation height, especially in subfields
of a few square Mm. This intensity could thus be used to measure the spatial
variation of the height of the transition region. The intensity in the
line-core emission peaks correlates with the temperature at its formation
height, especially for strong emission peaks. The peaks can thus be exploited
as a temperature diagnostic. The wavelength difference between the blue and red
peaks provides a diagnostic of the velocity gradients in the upper
chromosphere. The intensity ratio of the blue and red peaks correlates strongly
with the average velocity in the upper chromosphere. We conclude that the Mg II
h&k lines are excellent probes of the very upper chromosphere just below the
transition region, a height regime that is impossible to probe with other
spectral lines.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for ApJ, astro-ph abstract shortened
to confirm to submission requirement
The formation of IRIS diagnostics. III. Near-ultraviolet Spectra and Images
The Mg II h&k lines are the prime chromospheric diagnostics of NASA's
Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). In the previous papers of this
series we used a realistic three-dimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamics
model to calculate the h&k lines in detail and investigated how their spectral
features relate to the underlying atmosphere. In this work, we employ the same
approach to investigate how the h&k diagnostics fare when taking into account
the finite resolution of IRIS and different noise levels. In addition, we
investigate the diagnostic potential of several other photospheric lines and
near-continuum regions present in the near-ultraviolet (NUV) window of IRIS and
study the formation of the NUV slit-jaw images. We find that the instrumental
resolution of IRIS has a small effect on the quality of the h&k diagnostics;
the relations between the spectral features and atmospheric properties are
mostly unchanged. The peak separation is the most affected diagnostic, but
mainly due to limitations of the simulation. The effects of noise start to be
noticeable at a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 20, but we show that with noise
filtering one can obtain reliable diagnostics at least down to a S/N of 5. The
many photospheric lines present in the NUV window provide velocity information
for at least eight distinct photospheric heights. Using line-free regions in
the h&k far wings we derive good estimates of photospheric temperature for at
least three heights. Both of these diagnostics, in particular the latter, can
be obtained even at S/Ns as low as 5.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Updated
version with fixed typos in line list and language edit
Observations and modeling of H_2 fluorescence with partial frequency redistribution in giant planet atmospheres
Partial frequency redistribution (PRD), describing the formation of the line
profile, has negligible observational effects for optical depths smaller than
~10^3, at the resolving power of most current instruments. However, when the
spectral resolution is sufficiently high, PRD modeling becomes essential in
interpreting the line shapes and determining the total line fluxes. We
demonstrate the effects of PRD on the H_2 line profiles observed at high
spectral resolution by the Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) in the
atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. In these spectra, the asymmetric shapes of
the lines in the Lyman (v"- 6) progression pumped by the solar Ly-beta are
explained by coherent scattering of the photons in the line wings. We introduce
a simple computational approximation to mitigate the numerical difficulties of
radiative transfer with PRD, and show that it reproduces the exact radiative
transfer solution to better than 10%. The lines predicted by our radiative
transfer model with PRD, including the H_2 density and temperature distribution
as a function of height in the atmosphere, are in agreement with the line
profiles observed by FUSE. We discuss the observational consequences of PRD,
and show that this computational method also allows us to include PRD in
modeling the continuum pumped H_2 fluorescence, treating about 4000 lines
simultaneously.Comment: 17 pages, accepted for publication in Ap
Induced abortions and teenage births among asylum seekers in The Netherlands: analysis of national surveillance data
Induced abortions and teenage births among asylum seekers in The Netherlands: analysis of national surveillance data
NLTE modeling of Stokes vector center-to-limb variations in the CN violet system
The solar surface magnetic field is connected with and even controls most of
the solar activity phenomena. Zeeman effect diagnostics allow for measuring
only a small fraction of the fractal-like structured magnetic field. The
remaining hidden magnetic fields can only be accessed with the Hanle effect.
Molecular lines are very convenient for applying the Hanle effect diagnostics
thanks to the broad range of magnetic sensitivities in a narrow spectral
region. With the UV version of the Zurich Imaging Polarimeter ZIMPOL II
installed at the 45 cm telescope of the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno
(IRSOL), we simultaneously observed intensity and linear polarization
center-to-limb variations in two spectral regions containing the (0,0) and
(1,1) bandheads of the CN B 2 {\Sigma} - X 2 {\Sigma} system. Here we present
an analysis of these observations. We have implemented coherent scattering in
molecular lines into a NLTE radiative transfer code. A two-step approach was
used. First, we separately solved the statistical equilibrium equations and
compute opacities and intensity while neglecting polariza- tion. Then we used
these quantities as input for calculating scattering polarization and the Hanle
effect. We have found that it is impossible to fit the intensity and
polarization simultaneously at different limb angles in the frame- work of
standard 1D modeling. The atmosphere models that provide correct intensity
center-to-limb variations fail to fit linear polar- ization center-to-limb
variations due to lacking radiation field anisotropy. We had to increase the
anisotropy by means of a specially introduced free parameter. This allows us to
successfully interpret our observations. We discuss possible reasons for
underestimating the anisotropy in the 1D modeling.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in
Astronomy&Astrophysic
Solar polarimetry through the K I lines at 770 nm
We characterize the K I D1 & D2 lines in order to determine whether they
could complement the 850 nm window, containing the Ca II infrared triplet lines
and several Zeeman sensitive photospheric lines, that was studied previously.
We investigate the effect of partial redistribution on the intensity profiles,
their sensitivity to changes in different atmospheric parameters, and the
spatial distribution of Zeeman polarization signals employing a realistic
magnetohydrodynamic simulation. The results show that these lines form in the
upper photosphere at around 500 km and that they are sensitive to the line of
sight velocity and magnetic field strength at heights where neither the
photospheric lines nor the Ca II infrared lines are. However, at the same time,
we found that their sensitivity to the temperature essentially comes from the
photosphere. Then, we conclude that the K I lines provide a complement to the
lines in the 850 nm window for the determination of atmospheric parameters in
the upper photosphere, especially for the line of sight velocity and the
magnetic field.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, main journal publicatio
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