English

TeV Solar Gamma Rays as a probe for the Solar Internetwork Magnetic Fields

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2024-05-29 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Space Physics

Abstract

The magnetic fields that emerge from beneath the solar surface and permeate the solar atmosphere are the key drivers of space weather and, thus, understanding them is important to human society. Direct observations, used to measure magnetic fields, can only probe the magnetic fields in the photosphere and above, far from the regions the magnetic fields are being enhanced by the solar dynamo. Solar gamma rays produced by cosmic rays interacting with the solar atmosphere have been detected from GeV to TeV energy range, and revealed that they are significantly affected by solar magnetic fields. However, much of the observations are yet to be explained by a physical model. Using a semi-analytic model, we show that magnetic fields at and below the photosphere with a large horizontal component could explain the \sim1 TeV solar gamma rays observed by HAWC. This could allow high-energy solar gamma rays to be a novel probe for magnetic fields below the photosphere.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.17549,
  title  = {TeV Solar Gamma Rays as a probe for the Solar Internetwork Magnetic Fields},
  author = {Kenny C. Y. Ng and Andrew Hillier and Shin'ichiro Ando},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.17549},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

8 pages, 5 figures, comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:42:45.519Z