RAS-G Discussion Meeting

Self Organised Criticality and Turbulence in the Solar System

Burlington House, Piccadilly,  Central London, UK.

One day meeting, Friday Dec 8th 2000

 

ABSTRACTS

TALKS

Solar Wind Acceleration by Impulsive Events.

R Grappin (1), A Mangeney (1), SJ Schwartz (2) and WC Feldman (3)

(1) DESPA, Meudon, Paris 

(2) Queen Mary, London

(3) LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico

e-mail:S.J.Schwartz@qmw.ac.uk

We have studied the influence of brief intervals of elevated coronal temperatures on the solar wind. The results of even the simplest fluid modelling reveal that such events have a disproportionally large impact on the entire solar wind, such that the solar wind may be filled completely by plasma originating from them. We discuss the importance of these ideas in understanding both the gross solar wind features (e.g., flow speeds) and also microphysical aspects (temperature anisotropies, minor species temperatures, and particle beams).

 

 

Intermittency in Heliospheric Turbulence.

Christina Pagel and André Balogh

Space and Atmospheric Physics, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London SW7 2BU

e-mail:c.pagel@ic.ac.uk

The solar wind is a highly turbulent and intermittent medium at frequencies between 10-3 and 10-1 Hz. Various models have been put forward in an attempt to understand this process better, and tested against solar wind data.We have used the Ulysses fast latitude scan data to perform a wide-ranging comparison of three intermittency models - the well-known P model, in both its Kolmogorov and Kraichnan form, the lognormal cascade model and a model adapted from atmospheric physics, the G infinity model.They were tested using fits to graphs of the structure function exponents g(q), comparison with a non-linear measure of the deviation of g(q) from the non-intermittent straight line, and using extended self similarity techniques, over a large range of heliolatitudes.Tests of all three models indicated a high level of intermittency in the fast solar wind, and showed a varied structure in the slow wind, with regions of practically no intermittency next to regions of high intermittency, implying that the slow wind has no uniform origin. The lognormal and Kolmogorov P Model performed the best over all the tests, indicating that inhomogeneous energy transfer in the cascade is a good description.The Kraichan model performed relatively poorly, and the overall results show that Kraichnan model of turbulence is not well-supported. The G infinity model fitted the results surprisingly well and showed that there may very well be important universal geometrical aspects of intermittency over many physical systems.

Turbulence in Solar Flare Plasma.

Louise Harra

Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL

e-mail:lkh@mssl.ucl.ac.uk

Excess soft X-ray line broadening has been observed for many years during solar flares. Its interpretation has been debated to be either (a) the energy release site (b) response to energy deposition (c) response to energy release. Evidence has been found for both response to energy release in the form of evaporating, turbulent plasma, and also for turbulence at the loop top which may produce acceleration. Recently evidence has been found to show that pre-flare turbulence exists which increases slowly over the period of 10 minutes before the flare proper occurs. This will be discussed in terms of small scale reconnection events through emerging flux which build up to induce the flare trigger.

Self-Organized Criticality and Solar Flares.

Markus J. Aschwanden

Lockheed-Martin ATC, Solar & Astrophysics Lab., Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA

e-mail:aschwanden@lmsal.com

Solar Flares exhibit power-laws up to eight orders of magnitude in energy, if one includes the tiniest nanoflares detected now in extreme-ultraviolet with the TRACE telescope. This is probably the largest dynamic range of power-law behaviour observed in astrophysics to-date. Despite of this overwhelmingly clean manifestation of self-organized criticality, the relation of the underlying physics of magnetic energy release processes in the solar corona to the principle of self-organized criticality is subject of intense debates. We show that (1) a power-law distribution is a universal property of every nonlinear process with saturation limits set by random parameters, and that (2) the power-law slope can be used as diagnostic of coherent versus incoherent processes. We review obervations of frequency distributions of solar phenomena and how they were related to various models of self-organized criticality.

Sandpile Paradigm and Fusion Plasma Phenomenology.

R. Dendy, UKAEA Culham, U.K.

e-mail:richard.dendy@ukaea. org.uk

No abstract

Intermittency in a 1D MHD Model of Solar Flares.

S. Galtier

Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, U.K.

e-mail:galtier@maths.warwick.ac.uk

It is becoming increasingly clear that solar flares and the heating of the solar corona are related to magnetic activity on the Sun, an activity illustrated for instance in the movies of the dynamical corona made from observations with the YOHKOH spacecraft. As the sensitivity of instrumentation increases, a large spectrum of flares is recorded, in intensity, in duration and in numbers. Such histograms are known to obey power laws, the origin of which is not clear. Substantial progress was made in the wake of the work of Lu and Hamilton [1] (see eg Georgoulis and Vlahos [2]); they view solar flares as stemming from a purely statistical approach using sand-pile models of Self-Organised Critical (SOC) phenomena. In this context I will present a simplified one-dimensional MHD model of solar flares [3-4] in which the coronal heating is due to an intermittent dissipation along a magnetic loop. The model is able to reproduce the statistics observed in X-rays. The differences between MHD turbulence and SOC will be discussed.

[1] Lu and Hamilton, ApJ, 380, pL89 (1991).

[2] Georgoulis and Vlahos, A&A, 336, p721 (1998).

[3] Galtier and Pouquet, Solar Phys., 179, p141 (1998).

[4] Galtier, ApJ, 521, p483 (1999).

Energy emission from the sun and dissipative SOC models.

D. Hamon, H. J. Jensen, and M. Nicodemi

Department of Mathematics, ICSTM, U.K.

e-mail:

No abstract

Statistical flare models.

Loukas Vlahos

Department of Physics, University of Thessaloniki, 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece.

http://www.astro.auth.gr/~vla hos

It is common belief that many still unsolved problems in solar and stellar physics (coronal heating, plasma flows and dynamo, flares) are due to MHD turbulence driven magnetic dissipation. Sub-photospheric convection motions generate and move the magnetic fields, forming the active region complexes. The turbulence driven active region reaches a Self Organized Critical (SOC) state which we have simulated with a 3-D deterministic CA. We propose a new flare model called the statistical flare were sub-resolution magnetic dissipation heats and accelerates particles in random points inside large structures with still undefined filling factors. We have constructed recently a new setup were CA models can become compatible with MHD equations and yield also secondary variables such as currents and local E-fields. Heat conduction and particle diffusion along magnetic field lines spread the energy in large structures in a fraction of a second. 

 

Waiting Time Statistics in Solar Flares.

Vincenzo Carbone

Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' della Calabria, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy

e-mail:carbone@fis.unical.it

Solar flare activity is investigated by looking at the statistics of the waiting times between hard X-ray bursts. The results of the SOC-paradigm for solar flares are then compared with models describing dissipative events in MHD turbulence.

Extreme Statistics and Universal Fluctuations in Highly Correlated Systems.

S. C. Chapman, G. Rowlands (1), and N. W. Watkins(2)

(1) Physics Department, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, U. K. 

(2) British Antarctic Survey, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, U. K.

e-mail:Sandra.chapman@astro.warwick.ac.uk

Complex systems can often be characterized by long range correlations, a lack of scale, and in particular, by the exponents, of the power law probability distributions (PDF) of patches of activity in the system. Examples of these are energy dissipated in avalanches in sandpiles, in turbulent fluids and magnetization in a ferromagnet close to the critical point. Determining the exponents is nontrivial, requiring in- situ measurements over many decades. Here we consider what may be a more readily accessible measure, a global average quantity such as the total energy dissipation or magnetization. The PDF of this global measure is non Gaussian and here we derive its functional form in terms of the PDF of the individual energy dissipation events in the system. We find a single parameter distinguishes this global PDF and obtain its relationship to the source PDF. We derive the moments of the global PDF in terms of this parameter; these then provide a powerful tool to probe the degree of complexity of the system.

Field-Aligned Anisotropy in Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence.

Tim Horbury

Imperial College, London, U. K.

e-mail:t.horbury@ic.ac.uk

The presence of a background magnetic field in a turbulent plasma produces an anisotropy in the fluctuations, in contrast to the globally isotropic nature of neutral fluid turbulence: this anisotropy is a key property of turbulence in plasmas. The field-aligned rotational symmetry of the turbulence restricts the form of the two-point correlation tensor, making it easier to determine the structure of this physically important parameter. Spacecraft observations of MHD turbulence in the solar wind allow field-aligned anisotropy to be studied, but it is difficult to measure 3D structure with single spacecraft data. Previous work by others has shown that there is considerable power in wavevectors that are not parallel to the background field. We present a new, wavelet based analysis method using Ulysses polar magnetic field data, which is particularly well suited to this work. Extending earlier work, we present early results of this analysis including measurements of the diagonal elements of the correlation tensor and its scale dependence. The method offers the prospect of determining for the first time the full form of the correlation tensor: we discuss the consequences of such measurements.

Multi-Scale Turbulence in a 2-Dimensional Current Sheet Model

A J Klimas, V Uritsky, D Vassiliadis, and D N Baker

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

e-mail:alex@bokeh.gsfc.nasa.gov

Chang [Phys. Plasmas, 1999 and references therein] has suggested that the magnetospheric plasma sheet may be in self-organized criticality (SOC), or in a state that is closely related to SOC.New observational evidence continues to support this suggestion [Lui et al., GRL, 2000]. Early cellular automaton studies [e.g., see Chapman et al., GRL, 1998] have confirmed the compatibility of a global loading-unloading cycle with internal complex activity in the magnetosphere. Focusing on the plasma sheet, Klimas et al. [JGR, 2000] have studied the behavior of a 1-dimensional current sheet model containing a magnetic field reversal. They have shown that the current sheet model also exhibits a loading-unloading cycle and Uritsky et al. [in preparation] have shown that when executing the loading-unloading cycle the model dynamics is in a near-SOC domain. An extension of this current sheet model will be introduced. The behavior of a 2-dimensional MHD current sheet, coupled to an idealized current-driven instability that produces localized anomalous resistivity when and where the current density exceeds a critical value, will be demonstrated and discussed. The model is driven by convection of plasma and magnetic flux into a field reversal region and it unloads through the ejection of plasma and flux though an open boundary following field line reconnection in the reversal. The dynamics of this process will be discussed within the framework of the SOC paradigm.

Self-Organised Criticality vz Criticality in Magnetotail Dynamics: A Critical Revision.

Giuseppe Consolini

IFSI/CNR, Italy

e-mail:giuseppe@sunago2.ifsi.rm.cnr.it

No abstract

Scaling in the magnetosphere and solar wind:Where does the “smoking gun” point?

N W Watkins (1), M P Freeman (1), D J Riley (1,2), C S Rhodes (1,2), P S Wilson (1), and S C Chapman (3)

(1) British Antarctic Survey (NERC), High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK

(2) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

(3) University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

e-mail: nww@bas.ac.uk

The last 3 years have seen aresurgence of interest in the proposal by Chang (1992) that the Earth's magnetosphere may exhibit forced or self-organized criticality (F/SOC). In particular the observation of temporal scaling in the AE index by Consolini (1997) coupled with the demonstration by Chapman et al. (1998) that substorms might correspond to systemwide outputs of an otherwise scale-free system helped motivate sandpile-like MHD-derived models such as those developed by Klimas and co-workers. More recently Lui et al. (2000) have found evidence of spatial scaling in auroral dissipation measured by ultraviolet images. We examine whether the power law distribution of burst lifetimes in the AE index is evidence that the magnetosphere is a Self-Organized Critical (SOC) system. To do this we compare the burst lifetime distributions of the AU and |AL| indices with those of the vBs and epsilon solar wind input functions. We show that both the vBs and epsilon burst lifetime distributions are of power law form with an exponential cut-off, consistent with the solar wind being an SOC or turbulent system. Furthermore, the power law of the epsilon burst lifetime distribution is not significantly different to that of the AU and |AL| indices, indicating that this scale-free property of the AE indices could arise from the solar wind input and may not be an intrinsic property of the magnetospheric system. We discuss the implications of this result.

[Chapman and Watkins, Space. Sci. Rev., in press, 2000 (astr-ph/0007086);

Freeman et al., Geophys Res Lett, 27, 1087, 2000;

Freeman et al., Phys Rev E, December, 2000 (@astro-ph/0003114);

Watkins et al., J. Atmos. Sol.-Terr. Phys., in press, 2000 (astr-ph/0002359)]

WATCH Solar X-ray Bursts and the Statistical Flare Model: Waiting Time Distributions.

N.B. Crosby (1 and on leave from 2), M.K.Georgoulis (3) and N. Vilmer (2)

(1) Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, UK

(2) DASOP Observatoire de Paris, France

(3) Department of Physics, University of Thessaloniki, Greece

e-mail:norma_crosby@hotmail.com

The current debate concerning waiting time distributions between solar flares will be given. In the WATCH solar flare database no correlation was found between the elapsed time interval between successive flares arising from the same active region and the peak intensity of the flare. This result will be discussed with respect to what has been found in other observations. Furthermore our simulations based on a self-organised critical (SOC) cellular automaton statistical flare model, which includes a highly variable non-linear driver, reproduces this result. This will be compared to other results based on similar types of SOC models. The implication of the various results (observations and simulations) in regard to the above will be discussed: is there a correlation and/or is there not a correlation between solar flares?

Physical-Statistical Models of Solar Magnetic Field Interaction

Chris Brockwell and Andrew Conway

e-mail:c.p.brockwell@open.ac.uk

Theoretical understanding of solar activity such as reconnection, dynamo and flux tube theory are now well developed and have been used to explain phenomena recorded in a range of satellite and ground-based data.Much of this modelling deals directly with local (both spatial and temporal) physical information such as velocities, densities, temperatures and magnetic fields. On a larger scale, statistical data on frequencies and sizes of solar flares, CMEs and other events are also available. Modelling of this data has been less common, and has not been concerned with local physical quantities. We believe that whilst physical modelling is mostly (but not exclusively) appropriate for explaining local details, a statistical approach is needed to assemble the larger picture. To this end we use a one-dimensional cellular automaton model to formalize the photospheric magnetic fields and bulk flows.The local rules governing interaction between cells are guided by considerations of physical realism.The overall behaviour, which displays self-organising behaviour, is purely a consequence of collective effects.The model obeys simple one-dimensional fluid laws and represents magnetic reconnection in a parameterised way. Two notable results are the formation of large unipolar regions of magnetic fields, and events that have a power law distribution across 30 orders of magnitude with a power law index consistent with that deduced from observations.

Remote Diagnosis of Conservative SOC.

K P Macpherson (1) and A L MacKinnon (2)

(1) University of Central Lancashire

(2) University of Glasgow

e-mail:a.mackinnon@educ.gla.ac.uk

Percolation systems provide an understandable mathematical structure which can represent avalanche type processes. Remotely sensed, under conditions and for reasons that we describe, they may display much of the same phenomenology as the sandpile models usually representative of SOC (power-law event size distributions). We demonstrate that sandpile models 

may be recast in percolation terms, with a significant difference which arises ultimately from the mediating role of an underlying, local conservation law. While event size distributions do not distinguish these possibilities, statistics describing event temporal behaviour do (with some caveats about radiation processes). The data in the solar flare case favour an avalanche process in which a conservation law plays such a mediating role. Thus useful qualitative statements may be made regarding remotely sensed avalanche processes, even if the detailed physics is still uncertain.

POSTERS

Bursty Transport in Magnetically Confined Plasmas: Avalanche-like Processes or MHD Turbulence?

V.Antoni (1,4), V. Carbone (2,3), R. Cavazzana (1), L. Fattorini (1,4), G.Regnoli (1,4), E. Spada (1), N.

Vianello(1,4)

(1) Consorzio RFX, corso Stati Uniti 4, Padova, Italy

(2) Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita` degli Studi della Calabria, Rende (CS), Italy

(3) INFM, Unita` di Cosenza, Sez. A, Italy

(4) INFM, Unita` di Padova, Sez. A, Italy

No abstract

Observations on Solar Wind Intermittency: Radial Evolution and Characterization of Intermittent Events.

R. Bruno(1), V. Carbone(2), L.Sorriso-Valvo(2), E. Pietropaolo (3), and B. Bavassano(1)

(1) Istituto Fisica Spazio Interplanetario del CNR, 00133 Roma, Italy

(2) Dipartimento di Fisica Universit\`a della Calabria/INFM, 87036 Rende (Cs), Italy 

(3) Dipartimento di Fisica, Universit\`a di L'Aquila, 67100 L'Aquila, Italy 

e-mail:roberto.bruno@sunwks.ifsi.rm.cnr.it

Interplanetary solar wind velocity and magnetic field observations have been analyzed within the inner heliosphere in order to highlight their intermittent behavior. The radial evolution of intermittency, the different intermittent character of magnetic and velocity fluctuations, differences between fast and slow wind and, finally, the characterization of intermittent events are the main focus of this work.

Testing for Criticality in the Coupled Geospace System

N. W. Watkins and M. P. Freeman

British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, U.K.

e-mail: nww@bas.ac.uk

No abstract

Complexity in Sandpile Models for Astroplasma Confinement Systems.

B. Hnat and S. C. Chapman

University of Warwick, U.K.

e-mail:Sandra.chapman@astro.warwick.ac.uk)

No abstract

Fast brightenings at submillimeter waves only associated with a large solar flare

P. Kaufmann, J.-P. Raulin, E. Correia, J.E.R. Costa, C.G. Gimenez de Castro, A.V.R. Silva (all at 1), H. Levato (2), M. Rovira, C. Mandrini, R. Fernandez-Borda (all at 3), and O.H. Bauer (4)

(1) CRAAM/CRAAE, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Sao Paulo, Brasil.

(2) Complejo Astronomico El Leoncito, San Juan, Argentina.

(3) Instituto de Astronomia y Fisica del Espacio, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

(4) Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany.

We present high time resolution observations of AR 8910 obtained simultaneously at 212 GHz and 405 GHz during a large H-alpha flare, which produced a soft X-ray X 1.1 class event. Data were obtained with the new solar submillimeter telescope (SST) recently installed at El Leoncito observatory, to explore this poorly known part of the solar emission spectrum.A small slow submm enhancement ( < 100 sfu) was associated to bulk emissions at X-rays, H-alpha and microwaves. The event exhibited numerous submm-w 100-300 millisecond duration spikes, the larger ones with fluxes of the order of 50 and 180 sfu (+/- 20%) at 212 GHz and 405 GHz respectively. A dramatic increase in the rate of submm spikes incidence sets in as a new large loop system appears in AR 8910 and X-ray emission increases nearly one hour before the large flare. A maximum in the brightenings incidence rate (~ 30 per minute) correlates with the large flare light curves at X-rays and H-alpha. We suggest that the spikes observed only at submillimeter waves are produced by optically thick emissions of > 10 Mev electrons in compact synchrotron sources which may be representative of discrete primary energetic releases in flares.

Quiet sun coronal heating: sandpile reconnection model.

V. Krasnoselskih, O. Podladchikova (1), B. Lefebre (2), N. Vilmer (3)

(1) LPCE-CNRS, France

(2) Kyuchu Univ. of Fukuoka, Japan

(3) Obs. de Paris- Meudon, France 

No abstract

Investigating the Limit Cycle Behaviour in Avalanche Models With Nonlocal Communication.

A L MacKinnon (1) and K P Macpherson (2)

(1) University of Glasgow

(2) University of Central Lancashire

e-mail:k.macpherson@uclan.ac.uk

Starting from a nonlinear cellular automaton model used to model the occurrence of solar flares, we recall the physical motivation for modifying such models to include non-local communication between sites. An initial study showed that the introduction of too many remote sites may destroy the self-organised critical (SOC) state of the CA model. Indeed as the degree of nonlocal inter-connectedness is increased, a transition from SOC behaviour to limit cycle behaviour is observed. Using 3-D numerical simulations, we investigate further here the circumstances governing this transitional behaviour. We comment on parallels between this class of model and other popular avalanche models for complex dynamical systems.

Statistical study of simple and impulsive solar microwave flares

A. Pacini, J.P. Raulin, P. Kaufmann, E. Correia

CRAAM/CRAAEUniversidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Sao Paulo, Brasil

We have analyzed 1248 simple solar flares at 17 GHz detected by the Nobeyama radioheliograph (NRH) with 1 second time resolution. Only simple impulsive events have been chosen during the period 1991 and 1997.We present statistical distributions of the impulsive phase flare durations, T, (elapsed time between start and peak), the peak fluxes F and the time-integrated fluxes (E, fluence) over T. For each distribution of the parameters T, F and E, a clear maximum is obtained.These maxima are real, and well above any instrumental cutoff which would be given by the temporal resolution and the sensitivity of the data sample used. Moreover, the peak in the distribution of F values, is in agreement with similar past studies done at 22 GHz. The presence of real maxima in the distributions of T, F and E suggests, contrary to what has been deduced from similar X-ray studies, the existence of a minimum value for each of these parameters. The possibility of having lower limit values for T, F and E has already been proposed in the "quasi-quantized" hypothesis of the energy released during solar flares.

Non-Local Self Organised Critcality: A Scalar Model with Random Neighbours

Graeme A Stewart

Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ

email: graeme@astro.gla.ac.uk

There has been some interest since the introduction of SOC models in non-local communication between sites during avalanche events. Such models may provide a sounder basis for the analysis of systems such as solar flares, where it is known that accelerated particles may communicate with far faster than the Alfven time, triggering "subevents" at different spatial locations. To study this idea we introduce a finite state scalar field model with random neighbour interactions during avalanche events. We show that neglecting all spatial information greatly simplifies the problem, both analytically and numerically. Numerical simulations show that the system exhibits power law scaling in avalanche size and duration, and that system tends towards a uniform distribution of cells in each possible state. We analyse the statistics of avalanches which are far smaller than the system size and show that avalanche statistics are controlled by a Galton-Watson process.

Nonlinear Chaos as a Source of Complexity in a 1-D Continuum Current Sheet Model.

V. Uritsky and A. Klimas

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

e-mail:vadim@roselott.gsfc.nasa.gov

We analyze the dynamics of 1-D continuum current sheet model due to A.Klimas

at al (JGR, 2000). The turbulent activity of the model shows a hierarchy of scale-invariant turbulent effects consistent with the self-organized criticality (SOC) mechanism. On the global scale, the model displays critical scaling of active site density and zero-field susceptibility. On the intermediate scale, it demonstrates a multiscale pattern of spatiotemporal fluctuations characterized by power-law distribution functions. In the present study, we show numerically that the multiscale model behavior is strongly affected by nonlinear chaotic dynamics due to local interactions of neighboring current sheet elements. Depending on the model parameters, these dynamics can either randomize or regularize the conditions for the propagation of instability waves associated with SOC avalanches.Based on the results obtained, we suggest that the nonlinear chaos on the microscopic level of activity can play a crucial role in the formation of SOC regime in continuum systems without external noise sources.

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