High coronal structure of high velocity solar wind stream sources

Abstract

When solar wind plasma in the trailing (eastern) edge of a high-speed stream is mapped back to its estimated source in the high corona using the constant radial velocity (EQRH) approximation, a large range of velocities appears to come from a restricted range in longitude, often only a few degrees. This actually constitutes a sharp eastern coronal boundary for the solar wind stream source, and demands that the boundary have a three-dimensional structure. Using interplanetary data, we infer a systematic variation in ‘source altitude’ (identified approximately with the Alfven point), with faster solar wind attaining its interplanetary characteristics at lower altitudes. This also affects the accuracy of the source longitude estimates, so that we infer a width in the high corona of 4–6° for the source of the trailing edges of streams which appear to originate from a single longitude. We demonstrate that the possible systematic interplanetary effects (in at least some cases) are not large (≲ 2° in heliocentric longitude). The relatively sharp boundaries imply that high-speed streams are well-defined structures all the way down to their low coronal sources, and that the magnetic field structure controls the propagation of the plasma through the corona out to the vicinity of the Alfven point (≳ 20 R⊙).