Context. Over the past 40 years, helioseismology has been enormously successful in the study of the solar interior. A shortcoming has been the lack of a convincing detection of the solar g modes, which are oscillations driven by gravity and are hidden in the deepest part of the solar body-its hydrogen-burning core. The detection of g modes is expected to dramatically improve our ability to model this core, the rotational characteristics of which have, until now, remained unknown.Aims. We present the identification of very low frequency g modes in the asymptotic regime and two important parameters that have long been waited for: the core rotation rate, and the asymptotic equidistant period spacing of these g modes.Methods. The GOLF instrument on board the SOHO space observatory has provided two decades of full-disk helioseismic data. The search for g modes in GOLF measurements has been extremely difficult because of solar and instrumental noise. In the present study, the p modes of the GOLF signal are analyzed differently: we search for possible collective frequency modulations that are produced by periodic changes in the deep solar structure. Such modulations provide access to only very low frequency g modes, thus allowing statistical methods to take advantage of their asymptotic properties.Results. For oscillatory periods in the range between 9 and nearly 48 h, almost 100 g modes of spherical harmonic degree 1 and more than 100 g modes of degree 2 are predicted. They are not observed individually, but when combined, they unambiguously provide their asymptotic period equidistance and rotational splittings, in excellent agreement with the requirements of the asymptotic approximations. When the period equidistance has been measured, all of the individual frequencies of each mode can be determined. Previously, p-mode helioseismology allowed the g-mode period equidistance parameter P-0 to be bracketed inside a narrow range, between approximately 34 and 35 min. Here, P-0 is measured to be 34 min 01 s, with a 1 s uncertainty. The previously unknown g-mode splittings have now been measured from a non-synodic reference with very high accuracy, and they imply a mean weighted rotation of 1277 +/- 10 nHz ( 9-day period) of their kernels, resulting in a rapid rotation frequency of 1644 +/- 23 nHz ( period of one week) of the solar core itself, which is a factor 3.8 +/- 0.1 faster than the rotation of the radiative envelope.Conclusions. The g modes are known to be the keys to a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of the solar core. Their detection with these precise parameters will certainly stimulate a new era of research in this field.

Coronal plumes, which extend from solar coronal holes (CH) into the high corona and—possibly—into the solar wind (SW), can now continuously be studied with modern telescopes and spectrometers on spacecraft, in addition to investigations from the ground, in particular, during total eclipses. Despite the large amount of data available on these prominent features and related phenomena, many questions remained unanswered as to their generation and relative contributions to the high-speed streams emanating from CHs. An understanding of the processes of plume formation and evolution requires a better knowledge of the physical conditions at the base of CHs, in plumes and in the surrounding inter-plume regions. More specifically, information is needed on the magnetic field configuration, the electron densities and temperatures, effective ion temperatures, non-thermal motions, plume cross sections relative to the size of a CH, the plasma bulk speeds, as well as any plume signatures in the SW. In spring 2007, the authors proposed a study on ‘Structure and dynamics of coronal plumes and inter-plume regions in solar coronal holes’ to the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern to clarify some of these aspects by considering relevant observations and the extensive literature. This review summarizes the results and conclusions of the study. Stereoscopic observations allowed us to include three-dimensional reconstructions of plumes. Multi-instrument investigations carried out during several campaigns led to progress in some areas, such as plasma densities, temperatures, plume structure and the relation to other solar phenomena, but not all questions could be answered concerning the details of plume generation process(es) and interaction with the SW.

AbstractRecent work on coronal polar plumes (Gabriel et al. 2003, 2005) has aimed at determining the outflow velocity in plume and interplume regions, using the Doppler dimming technique on oxygen VI observations by SUMER and UVCS on SOHO. By comparing observations of SOHO/EIT with plume modelling, we show that the major part of plumes is the result of chance alignments along the line-of-sight of small enhancements in intensity. This confirms the so-called curtain model. These plumes can be attributed to reconnection activity along the boundaries of supergranule cells. A second population of plumes has a lower abundance and arises from surface bright points having a particular magnetic configuration. New observations using the Hinode/EIS spectrometer are in progress, with the aim of providing further insight for this model.

This study is based upon plumes seen close to the solar limb within coronal holes in the emission from ions formed in the temperature region of 1 MK, in particular, the band of Fe IX 171 angstrom from EIT on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. It is shown, using geometric arguments, that two distinct classes of structure contribute to apparently similar plume observations. Quasi-cylindrical structures are anchored in discrete regions of the solar surface ( beam plumes), and faint extended structures require integration along the line of sight (LOS) in order to reproduce the observed brightness. This second category, sometimes called "curtains," are ubiquitous within the polar holes and are usually more abundant than the beam plumes, which depend more on the enhanced magnetic structures detected at their footpoints. It is here proposed that both phenomena are based on plasma structures in which emerging magnetic loops interact with ambient monopolar fields, involving reconnection. The important difference is in terms of physical scale. It is proposed that curtains are composed of a large number of microplumes, distributed along the LOS. The supergranule network provides the required spatial structure. It is shown by modeling that the observations can be reproduced if microplumes are concentrated within some 5 Mm of the cell boundaries. For this reason, we propose to call this second population " network plumes." The processes involved could represent a major contribution to the heating mechanism of the solar corona.

The Phoebus group is an international collaboration of helioseismologists, its aim being to detect low-frequency solar g modes. Here, we report on recent work, including the development and application of new techniques based on the detection of coincidences in contemporaneous datasets and the asymptotic properties of the g-mode frequencies. The length of the time series available to the community is now more than ten years, and this has reduced significantly the upper detection limits on the gmode amplitudes. Furthermore, low-degree p modes can now be detected clearly at frequencies below 1000 μHz.

The Global Oscillation at Low Frequencies ( GOLF) experiment is a resonant scattering spectrophotometer on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO) mission, originally designed to measure the disk-integrated solar oscillations of the Sun. This instrument was designed in a relative photometric mode involving both wings of the neutral sodium doublet (D-1 at lambda 5896 and D-2 at lambda 5890 angstrom). However, a "one-wing" photometric mode has been selected to ensure 100% continuity in the measurements after a problem in the polarization mechanisms. Thus the velocity is obtained from only two points on the same wing of the lines. This operating configuration imposes tighter constraints on the stability of the instrument with a higher sensitivity to instrumental variations. In this paper we discuss the evolution of the instrument during the last 8 years in space and the corrections applied to the measured counting rates due to known instrumental effects. We also describe a scaling procedure to obtain the variation of the Doppler velocity based on our knowledge of the sodium profile slope and we compare it to previous velocity estimations.

An earlier publication (Paper I), which measured the outflow velocity in solar plumes out to 1.35 R☉ using the Doppler dimming technique, has here been extended out to 2.4 R☉ by including observations from SOHO UVCS. It is shown that plume outflow velocities, greater than interplumes at lower heights, have lower acceleration and fall below interplume velocities at heights greater than 1.6 R☉. This analysis resolves what has been an apparent disagreement between previously published work. The mass flow rate in plumes is shown to decrease with height, presumably through mass transfer to the interplume regions.

As a result of an error at the Press, the second panel of Figure 9 was repeated twice in the top row of the printed, black-andwhite version of this figure, and the first panel was omitted. This error appears in the print edition and the PDF and postscript (PS) versions available with the electronic edition of the journal, although the panels of the color figure displayed in the electronic article itself are correct. Please see below for the corrected print version of Figure 9. The Press sincerely regrets the error.

This paper is focused on the search for low-amplitude solar gravity modes between 150 and 400 μHz, corresponding to low-degree, low-order modes. It presents results based on an original strategy that looks for multiplets instead of single peaks, taking into consideration our knowledge of the solar interior from acoustic modes. Five years of quasi-continuous measurements collected with the helioseismic GOLF experiment aboard the SOHO spacecraft are analyzed. We use different power spectrum estimators and calculate confidence levels for the most significant peaks. This approach allows us to look for signals with velocities down to 2 mm s-1, not far from the limit of existing instruments aboard SOHO, amplitudes that have never been investigated up to now. We apply the method to series of 1290 days, beginning in 1996 April, near the solar cycle minimum. An automatic detection algorithm lists those peaks and multiplets that have a probability of more than 90% of not being pure noise. The detected patterns are then followed in time, considering also series of 1768 and 2034 days, partly covering the solar cycle maximum. In the analyzed frequency range, the probability of detection of the multiplets does not increase with time as for very long lifetime modes. This is partly due to the observational conditions after 1998 October and the degradation of these observational conditions near the solar maximum, since these modes have a "mixed" character and probably behave as acoustic modes. Several structures retain our attention because of the presence of persistent peaks along the whole time span. These features may support the idea of an increase of the rotation in the inner core. There are good arguments for thinking that complementary observations up to the solar activity minimum in 2007 will be decisive for drawing conclusions on the presence or absence of gravity modes detected aboard the SOHO satellite.

Observations have been carried out using the oxygen VI multiplet ratio 1032/1038 Â from SUMER on SOHO. Analysis based on the Doppler dimming method shows that the outflow velocity in polar plumes is higher than that in the interplume region, contrary to many published suggestions. The addition of UVCS data for the interplume region, leads to a conclusion that the effective oxygen ion “temperature” in the radial direction has to rise to around 14 MK over the height range 1.5 to 1.8 R⊙.

The Doppler dimming technique is used for the first time to study ultraviolet polar plumes in the height range of 1.05-1.35 R., using observations from the spectrometer SUMER on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. It is found that, contrary to a number of published suggestions, outflow velocities in the plumes exceed those in the interplume regions. Plume velocities are in excess of 60 km s(-1) and are approximately constant throughout this height region. They tend to converge with the velocity of the accelerating interplume material at some height above our region of study. The analysis suggests that plume material makes a substantial contribution to the total line of sight, favoring either a "curtain'' model for plumes or a chance alignment of a number of elementary cylindrical plumes. The intrinsic local density of plume material is some 20%-50% in excess of the interplume regions. Estimation of the total mass outflow indicates that approximately half of the fast solar wind at 1.1 R. arises from plumes, with the remainder from interplume material. This result validates the published electron temperature profile of David et al. for the fast wind onset, which had been questioned over the suggestion that the flow velocity might be negligible in solar plumes.

The predominant contribution to the frequency splitting of low-l solar p modes arises from the rotation of the solar interior and this lifts the frequency degeneracy in l to give a symmetric pattern where the observed (synodic) separation between adjacent m (i.e. for \Deltam\=1) is similar to400 nHz. Magnetic fields can also contribute to the splitting, but they do so in such a way as to introduce asymmetries in the arrangement of the components within each multiplet. In disc-integrated data this effect may become apparent when lgreater than or equal to2. Here, we attempt to extract estimates of the frequency asymmetries at l=2 from the analysis of disc-integrated data collected by the ground-based Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON) and the GOLF instrument on board the ESA/NASA SOHO satellite. Our analyses demonstrate that we have evidence for there being non-zero asymmetries present (significance approximate to3-4sigma) during an epoch coincident with high levels of surface activity close to the maximum of solar cycle 23. The asymmetries are indistinguishable from zero at minimum levels of activity near the cycle 22/23 boundary. We also compare the observed asymmetries with those calculated from a model that is based upon the recent predictions of Moreno-Insertis & Solanki. While the level of agreement between the two is found to be reasonable, the observations suggest (though with poor constraints placed upon this) that the influence on the mode frequencies of high-latitude activity may not be as strong as in the model.

This paper presents an attempt to evaluate the use below 1.5 R-o of the Doppler Dimming method, pioneered by the UVCS/SOHO team, who use it at larger radial distances. Following Noci et al. (1987), the theoretical model for this process has been re-evaluated, incorporating some of the more recent atomic and solar data. The model is applied to data from SUMER that was recorded above the limb in a classical polar coronal hole, during the solar minimum in May 1996. This 2-dimensional raster is capable of resolving the solar plumes. The interpretation is shown to be critically dependent on the assumed density and spatial homogeneity.