7 research outputs found
Prominence seismology using small amplitude oscillations
Quiescent prominences are thin slabs of cold, dense plasma embedded in the
much hotter and rarer solar corona. Although their global shape is rather
irregular, they are often characterised by an internal structure consisting of
a large number of thin, parallel threads piled together. Prominences often
display periodic disturbances mostly observed in the Doppler displacement of
spectral lines and with an amplitude typically of the order of or smaller than
2--3 km s, a value which seems to be much smaller than the
characteristic speeds of the prominence plasma (namely the Alfv\'en and sound
velocities). Two particular features of these small amplitude prominence
oscillations is that they seem to damp in a few periods and that they seem not
to affect the whole prominence structure. In addition, in high spatial
resolution observations, in which threads can be discerned, small amplitude
oscillations appear to be clearly associated to these fine structure
constituents. Prominence seismology tries to bring together the results from
these observations (e.g. periods, wavelengths, damping times) and their
theoretical modeling (by means of the magnetohydrodynamic theory) to gain
insight into physical properties of prominences that cannot be derived from
direct observation. In this paper we discuss works that have not been described
in previous reviews, namely the first seismological application to solar
prominences and theoretical advances on the attenuation of prominence
oscillations