Abstract
The chromosphere is one of the most complex and dynamic layers of the solar atmosphere. The dynamic phenomena occur on different spatial and temporal scales, not only in active regions but also in the so-called quiet Sun. In this paper we review recent advances in our understanding of these phenomena that stem from the analysis of observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The unprecedented sensitivity as well as spatial and temporal resolution of ALMA at millimeter wavelengths have advanced the study of diverse phenomena such as chromospheric p-mode-like and high-frequency oscillations, as well as small-scale, weak episodes of energy release, including shock waves. We review the most important results of these studies by highlighting the new aspects of the phenomena that have revealed as well as the new questions and challenges that have generated.
1 Introduction
The solar chromosphere is traditionally defined as a ∼2000-km-thick layer lying above the photosphere. Its emission can be detected in strong optical and UV spectral lines as well as in infrared, millimeter-wavelength (mm-λ) and submillimeter-λ continua (e.g. see; , and references therein). The pertinent spectral observations indicate that the chromosphere is highly inhomogeneous and dynamic. A dominant feature of the quiet chromosphere is the so-called chromospheric network, which consists of narrow bright emission lanes enclosing dark cells (the terms cell interior or internetwork are commonly used for these darker areas). The diameter of individual internetwork areas is about 20,000 km. The network coincides with the borders of supergranules, i.e. large-scale convection cells with similar sizes in the photosphere (). The network lanes host strong magnetic fields which are deformed and dragged there by the supergranular flows (e.g., ; , and references therein). The most well-known features of the quiet chromosphere when observed in Hα are the spicules which are thin, dark, elongated structures apparently emerging above the network boundaries. Their exact drivers, however, remain unidentified (). When seen at the limb, spicules show as bright jet-like features rising to heights of up to ∼10,000 km and then either diffuse in the corona or fall down.
In active regions the chromosphere consists of sunspots and their surroundings, plages (i.e. bright regions with magnetic fluxes that are larger than those of the quiet Sun, but smaller than those of sunspots), and a multitude of dark and bright fibril-like features (see, e.g., , and references therein). Filaments, i.e. narrow, dark, elongated thread-like features associated with chromospheric material that penetrates into the corona and is suspended by the magnetic field may appear both in and away active regions, along magnetic polarity inversion lines (e.g. seeVial and Engvold, 2015, and references therein).
The chromosphere has long been known to deviate from hydrostatic equilibrium (e.g. seeZirin, 1988). Furthermore, it is a particularly dynamic layer hosting a multitude of intermittent dynamic phenomena on different spatial and temporal scales. First of all, wave and oscillatory phenomena are ubiquitous throughout the chromosphere (e.g. see, and reference therein). Their most traditional manifestation is probably the chromospheric oscillations with periods from three to 5 min. These oscillations may represent the penetration of the photospheric p-mode oscillations into the corona (). In addition to them, and owing to its inhomogeneous and magnetic nature, a complex picture of wave phenomena, including reflections, interferences, mode conversions and shock waves has been attributed to the chromosphere (e.g. see; Wedemeyer-Böhm et al., 2009).
Episodes of small-scale energy release are also ubiquitous in the chromosphere, not only in active regions but also in the quiet Sun (e.g. seeTsiropoula et al., 2012; Shimizu, 2015; , and references therein). These may range from small events whose detection limit is determined by the sensitivity and resolution (spatial, spectral, and temporal) of the instrument to microflares and sub-flares. There is no unique name for them in the literature, but in this paper we adopt the term “transient brightenings.”
Both the dissipation of magnetic waves (e.g. see; ; ) and the braiding and reconnection of magnetic fields followed by energy release (e.g. see; ; ) are considered leading candidates for the heating of the upper layers of the solar atmosphere. Therefore both the wave phenomena observed in the chromosphere as well as its transient brightenings (no matter whether the latter are attributed to shock waves or magnetic reconnection) could be relevant to the heating of the chromosphere.
Although several of the observational building blocks of the chromosphere have been established a long time ago, the physics dictating their properties and dynamics is not. Several difficulties have contributed to this situation. First of all the chromosphere is intrinsically complex. It is the layer of the solar atmosphere where the transition from a plasma-dominated regime to a magnetic-field-dominated regime takes place. It is also a region where interactions between ions and neutrals can be relevant. Furthermore, although it is only heated to a few thousand degrees above the photosphere, the higher chromospheric densities, compared to those of the corona, imply that up to two orders of magnitude more energy is required to heat the chromosphere than the corona, making the problem of chromospheric heating much more demanding in terms of energy input compared to coronal heating. Moreover, the small spatial and temporal scales of the chromosphere call for high spatial and temporal resolution observations.
In addition to the above issues, the formation of the chromospheric spectral lines are associated with non-equilibrium effects, for example, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) and time-dependent ionization of hydrogen (see, ). The situation is better at millimeter wavelengths; the mm-λ emission of the non-flaring Sun is due to the thermal free-free mechanism under LTE. Therefore, the source function is Planckian and the observed brightness temperature is directly linked to the electron temperature via the radiative transfer equation (e.g. seeShibasaki et al., 2011; Wedemeyer et al., 2016). Unfortunately, old mm-λ data suffered from low sensitivity, low spatial resolution, and absolute calibration problems, which limited their contributions to understanding the chromosphere and its dynamics.
The relatively recent (since 2016) availability of solar mm-λ observations with ALMA at 3 mm (Band 3) and 1.25 mm (Band 6) offers the potential to significantly advance our knowledge of the chromosphere owing to the instument’s unprecedented spatial resolution and sensitivity (Shimojo et al., 2017a; White et al., 2017). So far, several publications reporting ALMA observations have appeared (those published before 2019 have been reviewed by ) covering diverse subjects, such as the structure of the quiet chromosphere, off-limb and on-disk spicules, comparisons of observations with models, oscillations and small-scale transient phenomena, plages, and sunspots.
In this paper we review the new findings concerning dynamic phenomena in the chromosphere that have been brought by ALMA observations. We do not cover dynamics of spicules because it is a subject of a separate review in this Special Research Topic collection. We also do not cover flares because up to now no ALMA observations of flares have been released (note, however, that the potential of mm-λ observations to clarify open issues in flare research is reviewed by Fleishman et al. in this Special Research Topic collection). The structure of our paper corresponds to the two major sub-topics of the subject (wave phenomena in Section 2 and transient brightenings in Section 3) for which measurable progress has been reported by using ALMA data. We present conclusions and discuss prospects for future work in Section 4.
2 Oscillatory phenomena
2.1 p-mode oscillations
2.1.1 Magnetic environment
The p-modes can propagate through both non-magnetic and magnetic environments (known as magneto-acoustic waves in the latter) where the magnetic field acts as a guide for their efficient propagation through the solar atmosphere. These different environments include 1) sunspot umbrae, resulting in the so-called umbral flashes in the chromosphere due to shock formation (; ), 2) sunspot penumbrae, forming running penumbral waves along the magnetic-field lines (; ), and 3) small-scale magnetic structures, manifested as point-like or fibrillar features in intensity images (,).
The characteristic periodicity of p-modes in the solar chromosphere has been known to be 3 min through a multitude of studies (e.g. ; ), either as a “global” property (averaged over a relatively large field of view, FoV), or in specific magnetic structures (e.g., in sunspot umbrae; ; ; see also Section 2.3). While in the former case, FoVs may often contain both non-magnetic and strong field-concentration regions, the contribution of the non-magnetic environments usually becomes more important in large quiet Sun FoVs where only small scale magnetic concentrations exist, covering a small fraction of the entire area.
The magnetic fields expand with height and bend over their surrounding areas as they extend into the upper atmosphere, creating the so-called magnetic canopies (; ; Solanki et al., 1991; ). The magnetic canopies may be detected through the entire solar atmosphere, and their heights depend on the field strength of their photospheric footpoints (). Thus, such magnetic canopies at chromospheric heights, seen as fibrillar structures in intensity images (in, e.g. Hα spectral line), may obscure the dynamics, including p-modes, coming from underneath –the “umbrella effect”. However, suggested that although the same effect should also exist in mm-λ observations, the dense fibrillar structures may not be visible in brightness temperature images due to their reduced lateral contrast (i.e., an insensitivity to Doppler shifts).
examined ten different ALMA datasets (six in Band 6 and four in Band 3) for the presence of global p-modes. They found that only two datasets, out of 10, showed enhanced power at around 4 mHz. Figure 1 shows the mean power spectra of the 10 ALMA datasets (left panel), along with those computed for the same FoVs observed in 1600 Å with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA; , onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO; ). The latter samples heights corresponding to the temperature minimum/lower chromosphere. From these plots it is obvious that while the global p-modes are clearly observed in all ten datasets sampling the low chromosphere, they show up in only two ALMA datasets that sample the upper chromosphere (one in Band 3 and one in Band 6).
FIGURE 1
FIGURE 2

Panels (A–D): the 22 December 2016 Band 3 dataset used for the detection of mm-λ oscillations. (A) An ALMA brightness temperature map in Band 3. (B) Spatially averaged brightness temperature power spectra from FFT (dash-dotted black line) and Lomb-Scargle (solid red line) transforms. Period ranges corresponding to the 3 and 5 min windows (each with a width of 1 min) are respectively depicted with the purple and yellow stripes. (C) The SDO/HMI line-of-sight photospheric magnetogram for a FOV twice as large as ALMA’s. The ALMA’s FOV is marked with the dashed square. (D) A top view of the field topology at upper chromosphere heights above the ALMA’s FOV. The colors identify inclination angles, from vertical (blue) to horizontal (red). Panels (E–H): same as panels (A–D) but for the 12 April 2018 Band 3 dataset. Figure reproduced from
FIGURE 3

Same as Figure 2 but for the 22 April 2017 Band 6 dataset (panels A–D) and the 12 April 2018 Band 6 dataset (panels E–H). Figure reproduced from
The importance of magnetic field environment in observation of p-modes in the mid-to-upper chromosphere (sampled by the ALMA Band 3 and 6 observations) may better be understood when the datasets appearing in Figure 2 for Band 3 and Figure 3 for Band 6, are compared. As evidenced in Figures 2A–D, the photospheric counterpart of the ALMA observations samples a very quiet region, while a strong enhanced-network patch in its immediate vicinity (the lower-right corner) creates the overarching highly inclined magnetic canopy over the entire FoV at the heights sampled by ALMA Band 3. As a result, the averaged power spectrum does not show any power enhancements at around 3–5 mHz. In comparison, when both the ALMA FoV and its surroundings pose very quiet areas in the photosphere (Figures 2E–H), the magnetic topology at chromospheric heights is organized in smaller-scale and less dense loops compared to those rooted in strong kG fields. Thus, the p-modes are not fully obscured, resulting in power enhancements in the 3–5 mHz frequency range. The first example shown in Figures 3A–D for ALMA observations in Band 6 refers to a plage area in both ALMA FoV and its surroundings, as illustrated in the HMI magnetogram. Hence, both nearly vertical fields and a dense magnetic canopy can be observed at the heights sampled by the ALMA Band 6. On the other hand, the p-modes show well in the other Band 6 dataset presented in Figures 3E–H which corresponds to the same target that was presented in Figures 2E–H.
The absence of power enhancements around 3–5 mHz (thus, lack of p-mode detection) could be the result of a combination of various phenomena. In the magnetic canopy regions, both the “umbrella” effect, where the magnetic canopy obscures oscillations coming from lower heights, and possibly the large field inclination angles (
2.1.2 Properties of p-mode oscillations
In
In
FIGURE 4

Quiet-Sun p-mode oscillations observed at 3 and 1.25 mm by ALMA. Black lines correspond to the spatially averaged PSDs, red lines to their fittings, and blue lines to the absolute residuals between the observed PSDs and the associated fittings. Panels (A,B) correspond to the original Band 6 and Band 3 observations, panel (C) to Band 6 observations at Band 3 spatial resolution and panel (D) for Band 3 observations corresponding to the Band 6 FoV (from
The p-mode oscillations corresponded to the 0.5–0.6 of the spectrum-integrated power (i.e., PSD integral over the entire considered frequency range), which suggests they correspond to a significant fraction of the observed brightness temperature fluctuations. On the other hand, the energy density of the p-mode oscillations in Band 6 was about 3 × 10–2 erg cm−3, which is roughly equivalent (see
Comparing with previous mm-λ quiet Sun observations at 3.5 mm at a spatial resolution of 10″ with Berkeley- Illinois-Maryland (BIMA) presented by White et al. (2006) and
2.2 High-frequency oscillations
High-frequency oscillations are of particular importance since they can carry a vast amount of energy to the upper solar atmosphere. Such waves, of different magneto-acoustic (magnetohydrodynamic) types, have previously been observed in the ultraviolet to infrared wavelength range and have shown to be energetic enough to potentially heat the solar chromosphere and beyond (
Recent publications have begun investigating properties of high-frequency oscillations and p-modes at millimeter wavelengths in the solar chromosphere, using state-of-the-art numerical simulations (
2.3 Sunspot oscillations
Sunspot oscillations are one of the most well known oscillatory phenomena in the solar atmosphere. The oscillations are detected as intensity and velocity variations (e.g. see the review by
Using ALMA 3 mm observations,
FIGURE 5

Spatial distribution of the 3-min oscillation power amplitude in 3 mm (top row) and in various sub-bands along the Hα line. The columns correspond to different ALMA solar scans, each of duration of about 10 min (from
3 Weak transient activity
3.1 Statistical properties of transient brightenings
In addition to oscillations, several studies have reported transient brightenings in both quiet Sun (Yokoyama et al., 2018;
Obviously, any meaningful statistics of the properties of such events requires their detection in sufficient numbers. Large numbers of events have indeed been reported by
FIGURE 6

The different colors mark the pixels participating in transient brightenings in 1600 Å (green), 3 mm (red) and 304 Å (blue) 10-min data of a quiet Sun region. In panels (A–D) all events identified at a given wavelength are displayed. In the bottom row, panels (E,F) display the events appearing both at 3 mm and 1600 Å while panels (G,H) display the events appearing both at 3 mm and 304 Å (from
The events detected by
FIGURE 7

A quiet Sun transient event observed at 3 mm and 304 Å. Panel (A) shows characteristic ALMA snapshots while panel (B) shows the same snapshots after the average 3 mm image has been subtracted. Rows c–f: same as (A,B) but for the 304 (C,D) and the 1600 Å data (E,F). The white arrows mark the transient brightening. The field of view is 35″ × 35″. Bottom row: light curves of the event emission at 3 mm (black) and 304 Å (blue) before and after processing (left and right panel, respectively) (from
It is worth mentioning that the number of ALMA detected events in the publications mentioned above could be considered as lower limits to their actual numbers due to smearing introduced to the data by the finite spatial resolution (see
In contrast to the events discussed above, the active-region transient events studied by
In the above studies, the locations of the ALMA transients show diversity which is related to different properties of the target regions. The 3 mm events detected by
The quiet Sun events detected by
FIGURE 8

(a) HMI magnetogram of a quiet Sun region with the magnetic field displayed in gray contours as well as blue, white, and red shades. The green dashed-dotted curves distinguish network regions from internetwork regions. The dotted circle marks the 30″-diameter region whose transients were analyzed. (b) The color marks the pixels participating in transient events with a brightness temperature 400 K and duration shorter than 200 s. The contours have the same meaning as in panel (a) (from
The region studied by
FIGURE 9

A small active region observed by SDO and ALMA. The left image is a longitudinal magnetogram from HMI/SDO, the middle image has been obtained by AIA/SDO while the right image shows the ALMA 3 mm emission. The dotted circles show the ALMA field of view. In the magnetogram the crosses mark the locations of Ellerman bombs. The triangles indicate locations of transient brightenings detected by both AIA and ALMA (adapted from
Contrary to the null detection of Ellerman bombs,
FIGURE 10

The two leftmost columns show characteristic snapshots of flaring fibrils in an HMI magnetogram, several AIA channels and ALMA 3 mm data. The contours mark a 3-mm brightness temperature of 104 K. The two rows at the top-right part of the figure show results from an r-MHD simulation. Panels (A,F) show Hα line wing and integrated Si IV 1393 Å intensity while panels (B–E) show the simulation’s emission in AIA 94, 171, 304 Å and 3 mm, at its original spatial scale. In panels (G–J) the spatial resolution of the simulation has been degraded resulting to pixel size of 0.3″. The top and bottom arrows mark the locations of an Ellerman bomb and a UV burst, respectively. The remaining columns at the bottom-right part of the figure show time profiles (3 mm, 1700, 1600, 304, 171, and 94 Å from bottom to top) of the events marked NF1, NF2, NF3 at the two left columns (adapted from
3.2 Morphology of transient activities
Most studies of ALMA transient brightenings have come out of observations obtained with a 3-mm spatial resolution of , and the detected transients are unresolved (seeFigure 7 for a typical example) with sizes comparable to the size of the synthesized beam. This indicates that the typical size of the mm-λ transients should be smaller than , and that the few resolved ones may, on average, represent rather energetic events.
The first detection of a resolved transient brightening has been reported by Shimojo et al. (2017b) (seeFigure 11 for a snapshot around the peak of the event). The event was associated with an X-ray bright point near a sunspot. The bright point was visible in soft X-ray, EUV, and 3-mm images. The location of the brightest part of the 3-mm source (left box of the top left panel of Figure 11) matches the loop top of the X-ray bright point. Hence, it is hard to think that the 3-mm source is located in the chromosphere, and the source might not be optically thick.
FIGURE 11

Images of a plasmoid ejection close to the time of its maximum emission. From left to right and top to bottom we present images at 3 mm (ALMA), 1700, 304, 131, 171, 193, 211, 335, and 94 Å (all from AIA), and Al-poly filter soft X-rays (from Hinode XRT) (from Shimojo et al., 2017b). © AAS. Reproduced with permission.
The time evolution of the event in the EUV and soft X-ray images is similar to that of coronal jets (e.g. seeShimojo et al., 2007;
Transient ejecta have also been revealed in other ALMA observations. For example Yokoyama et al. (2018) presented the ejection of a small blob at 3 mm which was associated with a spicule appearing in Mg II images obtained with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS
We note in passing that Yokoyama et al. (2018) also revealed that there is a correspondence in the solar limb location between 3-mm ALMA images and 171 Å images obtained by AIA/SDO. Since the limb is populated by dynamic structures like spicules, this result can be used both for the coalignment of ALMA and EUV images and for constraining the variation of their density with height.
Figure 10 indicates that some of the events detected by
3.3 Energetics of transient brightenings
The importance of transient brightenings as potential contributors to the heating of the upper layers of the solar atmosphere has been highlighted in Section 1. Therefore it is not a surprise that in some of the papers reporting on ALMA transient brightenings, estimates of their energy content are provided. The mm-λ emission is considered to arise from thermal free-free emission. Three approaches to the subject have been developed: 1) Direct use of the ALMA brightness temperature enhancements for the calculation of the thermal energy supplied to the chromosphere by the transients (
In approach 1) the mm-λ brightness temperature enhancement is considered to be equal to the electron temperature increase of the plasma which is correct only if the mm-λ emission is optically thick.
FIGURE 12

Energetics of quiet Sun ALMA transients. In the top panel, the black curve outlines the frequency distribution of 1.25-mm transients. The gray band marks the uncertainties while the red line represents the power-law fit (with index of 1.64) of the frequency distribution for energies erg. In the bottom panel the energetics of 3-mm transients are shown with a layout indentical to the top panel. The only exception is that the red line represents the power-law fit (with index of 1.73) of the frequency distribution for energies erg (from
Shimizu et al. (2021) performed an in-depth analysis of a microflare event observed at 3 mm as well as in UV, EUV, and soft X-rays. The thermal energy supplied to the chromosphere by the event was 2.2 × 1024 erg. This estimate was derived from the 3 mm emission at the footpoint of a (micro-)flaring loop that emitted in soft X-rays. The soft X-ray data were used to estimate the event’s thermal energy that was supplied to the corona. It was found that the coronal excess energy was about 100 times larger than the chromospheric one. The fact that compared to the soft X-ray emission, the event’s emission at 3 mm was 1) more impulsive, 2) clearly reached its peak before the soft X-ray emission, and 3) was associated with a microflare’s footpoint while the soft X-ray emission came from the loop led Shimizu et al. (2021) to argue that the energy measured from the 3 mm data can be viewed as a proxy to the energy carried by the non-thermal electrons that impinge deeper and denser atmospheric layers. This result may reflect that the non-thermal energy is not adequate to account for the thermal component in this event because of a deficit of such energetic electrons. Warmuth and Mann (2020) reached a similar conclusion for a set of weak flares they analyzed.
When an event’s mm-λ emission is optically thin, the observed excess brightness temperature is not equal to the plasma electron temperature increase. In such case if the event has been co-observed in EUV or soft X-rays, the variation of the assumed electron density and temperature may reveal parameter spaces that can reconcile the intensity enhancements in both EUV/soft X-rays and mm-λ. That was the strategy adopted by Shimojo et al. (2017b) who found that in their plasmoid event (seeSection 3.2) the appropriate pair of electron temperature and density (105 K and 3 × 109 cm−3, respectively) yields a thermal energy of 5 × 1024 erg.
An alternative, albeit less straightforward approach, is to constrain the energetics of mm-λ transient events by comparing their observations with MHD simulations. This path was followed by
3.4 Detection of shock waves
Significant attention has been drawn to the detection of possible signatures of propagating shock waves in ALMA data because: 1) dissipation of shock waves may have a bearing on the heating of the chromosphere and corona, and 2) 1D hydrodynamic simulations (see
Typically, snapshots from 3D simulations of propagating shock waves show, especially in regions of small magnetic field strength, a pronounced small-scale mesh-like pattern of elongated structures which is produced by propagating shock waves. Wedemeyer et al. (2016) (see also Wedemeyer-Böhm et al., 2007) concluded that the larger building blocks of such pattern can still be visible at a spatial resolution of 0.9″. However, such resolution, although feasible with ALMA at 1.25 mm, is probably at or beyond the instrument’s capabilities at 3 mm where most of solar observing programs have been executed; the so-far most used Band 3 antenna configuration, C3, yields spatial resolution of . Therefore, it is not a surprise that the predicted shock-induced spatial pattern has yet to be identified with clarity in ALMA images.
Simulations also show how a number of plasma and radiation macroscopic parameters may change with height and time during the propagation of a shock wave. As an example in Figure 13 (top left panel) we show the gas temperature as a function of time and height at the location of a shock wave detected in the simulations by
FIGURE 13

Top left [panel (A)]: Gas temperature as a function of time and height for a simulated shock wave. The blue and green dots indicate the formation heights for emission at 1.309 (SB1) and 1.204 mm (SB4), respectively. Top right [panel (B)]: Time profile of the brightness temperature at SB1 (solid blue) and SB4 (solid green) as well as of the gas temperature at the τ = 1 heights of the corresponding wavelengths (blue/green dotted). Bottom panels: same as top panels but for the vertical velocity of the gas (from
In the left bottom panel of Figure 13 we show the material’s vertical velocity associated with the same simulated shock as a function of time and height. The pre-shock region is dominated by a bulk downflow of relatively cool material which is followed by the upflow of hotter material that is associated with the development of the shock. The upflow velocity reaches a value of ∼10 km s−1 at the formation heights of the 1.25 mm radiation but velocities as double as that are registered higher up. On the other hand, the velocity of the vertical propagation of the shock front as can be depicted along the sharp shock-related height-time slopes in the left panels of Figure 13 lies in the range of ∼20–80 km s−1.
The shock-related excess brightness temperature in the simulation we presented in Figure 13 is similar to those reported in other simulations (e.g. seeWedemeyer-Böhm et al., 2007) whereas the transient brightenings detected by
Overall, the comparison of the simulation results with ALMA data may lead to the following criteria for the identification of shock signatures in mm-
λtransient brightenings (
seealso
;
)
• Excess brightness temperature on order from a few hundred to more than a thousand degrees Kelvin.
• Temporal FWHM on the order of tens of seconds.
• Small lateral motions (i.e. with speeds smaller than the local sonic and Alfven speeds) during their lifetime since they are supposed to represent upward-propagating disturbances along magnetic field lines of minimal inclination.
• Occurrence in regions of relatively small magnetic field strength.
• Brightness temperature increases and decreases which should be consistent with undulatory intensity changes recorded in wavelegth-time cuts of the emission from chromospheric lines. This criterion probably provides the most compelling evidence for the presence of a shock wave (see below for the discussion of a particular example).
FIGURE 14

Panels (A–E) show characteristic snapshots of a transient brightening attributed to a propagating shock wave. The center of the field of view is marked by the blue “x.” Panels (F,G) show vertical and horizontal cuts, respectively, across the center of the field of view which is indicated by blue dots for the times of panels (A–E). Blue and white lines indicate apparent velocity slopes for 10 and 20 km s−1, respectively. Panel (H) shows the brightness temperature time profile of the center of the field of view (from
When a shock passes through the chromosphere one expects wavelength-time (λ-t) cuts of chromospheric line emission to show a repetitive pattern of a blueshifted excursion that gradually drifts toward the red wing of the line. Such pattern should yield a “sawtooth” modulation in the λ-t cuts. That is exactly what was observed by
FIGURE 15

Wavelegth-time plot for Mg II k (panel B) and its temporal derivative (panel A) of a 1″ × 1″ area above a plage with recurrent shock waves. Panels (C,D) same as panels (A,B) but for Si IV. In all panels the 1.25 mm emission is overplotted (red curves). The rest-wavelegth position is marked with a dotted line. The arrows point to blueshifts and correlated 1.25-mm emission increases (from
4 Conclusions and prospects for the future
Oscillations, wave phenomena, and transient brightenings, along with turbulence, non-periodic temporal variations, and instrumental noise, all contribute to the observed time variability at any location in the chromosphere. Therefore, for any meaningful study of chromospheric dynamics care must be taken to separate these components. Despite the difficulties several important new results about the dynamic chromosphere have come out since the relatively recent (2016) initiation of regular solar observations with ALMA. The most important findings are summarized below.
• Magnetic field strength and topology largely influence the oscillatory behavior of the chromosphere; the traditional 3-min p-mode oscillations appear at mm-λ only above regions showing small amounts of overlying horizontal magnetic flux, i.e. over weak-field quiet Sun regions.
• When the p-modes are present, they represent brightness fluctuations of about 1–2% with respect to the average quiet Sun. But they correspond to ∼0.5–0.6 of the spectrum-integrated power, i.e. they represent a significant fraction of the observed mm-λ brightness temperature fluctuations. For the first time, their power has been spatially resolved, thanks to the unprecedented ALMA’s spatial resolution. Similar p-mode frequencies have been established both in the network and cell interior.
• High frequency (periods of 66–90 s) oscillations in brightness temperature, size, and horizontal motion of small-scale bright features have been detected for the first time in mm-λ observations.
• The first detection of spatially resolved mm-λ oscillations above a sunspot exhibited properties consistent with the propagation of magneto-acoustic waves above the umbra with some indications of nonlinear steepening.
• A multitude of weak transient brightenings, both in the quiet Sun and active regions, has been detected in ALMA data. Their excess brightness temperature may lie from about 40 K up to about 5000 K above background. Most of them are spatially unresolved. Some of the resolved ones are associated with ejecta that are likely caused by magnetic reconnection.
• The thermal energy of the transient brightenings is between 2 × 1023 and 1024 erg. The computed lower end of their energy distribution is among the smallest ever reported irrespective of the observing wavelength. However, their power per unit area can account for only ∼1% of the radiative losses from the quiet low chromosphere.
• Brightness temperature increases in mm-λ transient brightenings could result from acoustic/magnetoaccoustic shocks or from magnetic reconnection. Those associated with ejecta are probably induced by reconnection while those showing brightness temperature modulations that are consistent with undulatory intensity changes recorded in λ-t cuts of the emission from chromospheric lines may arise from shocks. A multitude of transients has been attributed to propagating shocks.
The above list highlights ALMA’s great potential to address open issues in chromospheric physics. The major advantage of ALMA data is probably their ability to directly probe the spatial distribution and temporal variability of the electron temperature of the plasma without the need to address complicated effects arising from the non-LTE conditions prevailing in the formation of chromospheric spectral lines.
On the other hand, the major difficulties associated with solar ALMA observations include the small field of view, relatively low spatial resolution compared to state-of-the-art observations in other wavelengths, the availability of a small number of frequency bands, as well as the demanding processing of the visibility data. The field of view can be enlarged by invoking mosaicking techniques at the cost of reduced cadence. With such a setup, only slowly varying phenomena can be tracked and this partly explains why in most of the studies that we reviewed in this paper, Band 3 data were analyzed; it is the frequency band providing the largest FOV, nominally 60″, for solar observing (the other part of the explanation is that, due to weather/atmospheric conditions, the execution of observations becomes increasingly demanding with frequency).
The study of the height dependence of dynamic phenomena requires observations at as many frequencies as possible. Currently ALMA is capable of observing one frequency band at a time. Things will improve by using subarrays, i.e. splitting an array configuration into pieces that observe different frequency bands at the same time or/and by adding new frequency bands to the solar observing programs. For example, the recent addition of Band 7 (0.86 mm) will help us probe lower heights than Band 6. At lower frequencies, a possible future addition of Band 1 (7.25 mm) will probe higher layers where the impact of oscillations should be lower, and thus the detection of weaker transient brightenings could be facilitated. Currently, making snapshot images at different spectral windows within the same ALMA band (see
Throughout this paper the need for observations with the highest possible spatial resolution has been highlighted because several of the phenomena we discussed (for example transient brightenings) exhibit spatial scales at or below ALMA’s current spatial resolution. Since ALMA’s Cycle 7 (October 2019–October 2021, which includes the observatory’s shutdown period due to the COVID-19 pandemic) the C4 antenna configuration array, whose most extended baseline is over 700 m, has been enabled for solar observations. With the C4 configuration a spatial resolution of about 1″ can be achieved at 3 mm, which constitutes an improvement of a factor of two over the resolution of the Band 3 observations reviewed in this paper. Unfortunately, there has been no paper yet reporting observations of waves or transient events with the C4 configuration. However, the potential to observe with ALMA at sub-arcsecond resolution has been demonstrated by
The implementation of circular polarization (Stokes parameter, V) measurements to future solar ALMA observing programs is anticipated to help constraining the magnetic field in the chromosphere. However, we note that the expected low degree of circular polarization outside of active regions demands high sensitivity and will certainly require the development of advanced calibration and imaging procedures. At the time of writing of this paper it is not yet known when solar V ALMA observations will become available. However, synergies between ALMA and high-sensitivity, high spatial and spectral polarimetric observations of photospheric and chromospheric magnetic fields (like the ones that will become available by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, DKIST, instrumentation
We also tried to emphasize that an important ingredient of the recent advances in the study of the dynamic chromosphere is the synergy between the ALMA observations and observations at (E)UV and X-rays. In particular, several spectral lines observed by IRIS (e.g., Mg II h and k) are formed at about the same height as the mm-λ continua observed with ALMA, but probe different plasma properties, thereby providing a highly complementary dataset to the ALMA data (e.g. see
Statements
Author contributions
All authors have contributed to preparing this article.
Acknowledgments
ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada) and NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in co-operation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, 654 AUI/NRAO, and NAOJ. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
sun solar radio emission, sun chromosphere, sun quiet sun, sun active regions, sun oscillations, sun MHD waves
Citation
Nindos A, Patsourakos S, Jafarzadeh S and Shimojo M (2022) The dynamic chromosphere at millimeter wavelengths. Front. Astron. Space Sci. 9:981205. doi: 10.3389/fspas.2022.981205
Received
29 June 2022
Accepted
27 July 2022
Published
04 October 2022
Volume
9 - 2022
Edited by
Mario J. P. F. G. Monteiro, University of Porto, Portugal
Reviewed by
João M. da Silva Santos, National Solar Observatory, United States
Tomoko Kawate, National Institute for Fusion Science, Japan
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© 2022 Nindos, Patsourakos, Jafarzadeh and Shimojo.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Alexander Nindos, anindos@uoi.gr
This article was submitted to Stellar and Solar Physics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
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