Lead Investigator: Louis H Strous
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Other Team Members: Richard C Canfield & Alexei A Pevtsov
Abstract:
For one or more active regions, we plan to compare magnetic helicity maps derived from vector magnetograms made at ground-based observatories with kinetic helicity maps derived from three-dimensional velocity measurements based on high-resolution MDI Dopplergrams to determine if the distribution of the vertical component of magnetic helicity density is in any observable way related to the distribution of the vertical component of the kinetic helicity density (i.e. flows) in the photosphere.
The vertical velocities are derived directly from the Dopplergrams, and the horizontal velocities at the same photospheric heights are derived from the same Dopplergrams by correlation and/or feature tracking on the granulation visible in the Dopplergrams. The Dopplergrams need to be recorded at a sampling rate that sufficiently covers the granular lifetime if granulation is to be used to derive horizontal velocities.
Complete text of proposal.