Variation of Emission Line Width in Mid- and High-Latitude Corona

Abstract

Spectroscopic studies of the solar corona, using the high spatial and spectral resolution 25-cm coronagraph at the Norikura Solar Observatory for equatorial off-limb observations, indicated that the variation of radiance and line width with height is different for different temperature lines. The line width of the forbidden red emission line [Fe x] 6374 Å was found to increase with height, and that of the green emission line [Fe xiv] 5303 Å decreased with height. This had been interpreted in terms of the interaction between different temperature plasmas but needed to be confirmed. Further observations were made on several days during 2004, in two emission lines simultaneously covering the mid-latitude and polar regions to investigate the existence of the observed variation in other parts of the solar corona. In this study, we have analysed several raster scans that cover mid- and high-latitude regions of the off-limb corona in all four bright emission lines [Fe x] 6374 Å, [Fe xi] 7892 Å, [Fe xiii] 10747 Å, and [Fe xiv] 5303 Å. We find that the FWHM of the red line increases with height and that of the green line decreases with height, similar to the observations in the equatorial regions. The line widths are higher in the polar regions for all of the observed emission lines except the green line. Higher values of FWHM in polar regions may imply higher non-thermal velocities, which could be further linked to a non-thermal source powering the solar-wind acceleration, but the reason for the behaviour of the green emission line remains to be explored.