English

Exploring if a coronal dimming event can produce coronal hole-like properties

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2026-07-28 v1

Abstract

Coronal dimmings, or transient coronal holes, are manifested as a sudden reduction in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray emission, often following solar eruptions. We investigate whether a dimming event can produce coronal hole-like plasma characteristics by comparing imaging and spectroscopic observations from Solar Orbiter, Hinode, IRIS, and SDO prior and during the dimming. The SDO/AIA 193 \r{A} emission intensity in the dimming region was reduced to the same level as the neighbouring coronal hole within 11 hours. The Doppler velocity measured with Fe XII (corona) decreased from 0.340.27+0.37-0.34^{+0.37}_{-0.27} km/s towards a predominant upflow of 3.20.6+0.4-3.2^{+0.4}_{-0.6} km/s. The first ionisation potential (FIP) bias was reduced towards photospheric values. We found an increase in the number of automatically detected EUV brightenings near the dimming boundary in SDO/AIA 193 \r{A} which could be a sign of magnetic reconnection. In the cooler SDO/AIA 171 \r{A} or Solar Orbiter HRI_EUV 174 \r{A} channel, we did not observe such an increase. Coronal bright points (CBPs) appeared relatively unaffected by the formation of the dimming. The Mg II k3k_3 (chromosphere) Doppler velocities were unchanged, except for a small reduction in the dimming upflows in areas with weak magnetic fields (<20<20 G). We find that the dimming only shows partial coronal hole-like properties; specifically, in the coronal emission lines and at temperatures of >1>1 MK. We suggest that this is due to the dimming resulting from plasma depletion only at higher altitudes. Since the CBPs were not significantly impacted by the dimming, we used their magnetic loop heights (10\sim 10 Mm) as the lower limit to the dimming height. Our findings provide new insights into the atmospheric structure of coronal dimmings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.25847,
  title  = {Exploring if a coronal dimming event can produce coronal hole-like properties},
  author = {Adriana De-Sassi and Louise Harra and Krzysztof Barczynski and David H. Brooks and Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta and Ioannis Kontogiannis and Säm Krucker and Cristina H. Mandrini and Eric Priest and Alphonse C. Sterling and Yingjie Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.25847},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)