Abstract
Abstract Propagating transverse waves are thought to be a key transporter of Poynting flux throughout the Sun’s atmosphere. Recent studies have shown that these transverse motions, interpreted as the magnetohydrodynamic kink mode, are prevalent throughout the corona. The associated energy estimates suggest the waves carry enough energy to meet the demands of coronal radiative losses in the quiescent Sun. However, it is still unclear how the waves deposit their energy into the coronal plasma. We present the results from a large-scale study of propagating kink waves in the quiescent corona using data from the Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter (CoMP). The analysis reveals that the kink waves appear to be weakly damped, which would imply low rates of energy transfer from the large-scale transverse motions to smaller scales via either uniturbulence or resonant absorption. This raises questions about how the observed kink modes would deposit their energy into the coronal plasma. Moreover, these observations, combined with the results of Monte Carlo simulations, lead us to infer that the solar corona displays a spectrum of density ratios, with a smaller density ratio (relative to the ambient corona) in quiescent coronal loops and a higher density ratio in active-region coronal loops.
Highlights
It is well established that transverse wave modes are ubiquitous throughout the Sun’s atmosphere
The damping of propagating kink waves in the quiescent corona is found to be weaker than the damping of the standing kink modes in active regions
Both our intuition and the results of the forward modelling support the role of the density contrast playing a key role in the damping of kink waves in the quiescent Sun
Summary
It is well established that transverse wave modes are ubiquitous throughout the Sun’s atmosphere. The most unambiguous signature of these waves is the transverse displacement of magnetised wave guides, observed in both the chromosphere (e.g., fibrils Morton et al 2012, 2014; Jafarzadeh et al 2017; super-penumbral fibrils Morton et al 2021; spicules Okamoto & De Pontieu 2011) and corona (e.g., Tomczyk et al 2007; McIntosh et al 2011; Thurgood et al 2014; Morton et al 2019; Yang et al 2020). There appear to be three common variants of the kink mode identified: the rapidly-damped standing mode
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