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| Paper: |
Detection of Flux Emergence, Splitting, Merging, and
Cancellation in the Quiet Sun |
| Volume: |
455, 4th Hinode Science Meeting: Unsolved Problems and Recent Insights |
| Page: |
169 |
| Authors: |
Iida, Y.; Hagenaar, H.; Yokoyama, T. |
| Abstract: |
We investigate the frequency of magnetic activities,
namely flux emergence, splitting, merging, and cancellation, through
an automatic detection in order to understand the generation of the
power-law distribution of magnetic flux reported by Parnell et al. (2009). Quiet Sun magnetograms observed in the Na I 5896 Å line by
the Hinode Solar Optical Telescope is used in this study. The
longitudinal fluxes of the investigated patches range from ≈
1017 Mx to ≈ 1019 Mx. Emergence and cancellation are
much less frequent than merging and splitting. The time scale for
splitting is found to be ≈ 33 minutes and independent of the
flux contained in the splitting patch. Moreover magnetic patches
split into any flux contents with an equal probability. It is shown
that such a fragmentation process leads to a distribution with a
power-law index –2. Merging has a very weak dependence on flux
content, with a power-law index of only –0.33. These results
suggest that (1) magnetic patches are fragmented by splitting,
merging, and tiny cancellation; and (2) flux is removed from the
photosphere through tiny cancellations after these fragmentations. |
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