Dynamics of Magnetic Flux Elements in the Solar Photosphere

Abstract

The interaction of magnetic fields and convection is investigated in the context of the coronal heating problem. We study the motions of photospheric magnetic elements using filtergrams obtained at the Swedish Vacuum Solar Telescope at La Palma. We use potential-field modeling to extrapolate the magnetic and velocity fields to larger height. We find that the velocity in the chromosphere can be locally enhanced at the separatrix surfaces between neighboring flux tubes. The predicted velocities are several km/s, significantly larger than those of the photospheric flux tubes, which may have important implications for coronal heating. sComment: submitted to ApJ, 21 pages, 10 figure