Depletion of Heavy Ion Abundances in Slow Solar Wind and Its Association with Quiet Sun Regions

Abstract

The exact coronal origin of the slow-speed solar wind has been under debate for decades in the Heliophysics community. Besides the solar wind speed, the heavy ion composition, including the elemental abundances and charge state ratios, are widely used as diagnostic tool to investigate the coronal origins of the slow wind. In this study, we recognize a subset of slow speed solar wind that is located on the upper boundary of the data distribution in the O7+/O6+ versus C6+/C5+ plot (O-C plot). In addition, in this wind the elemental abundances relative to protons, such as N/P, O/P, Ne/P, Mg/P, Si/P, S/P, Fe/P, He/P, and C/P are systemically depleted. We compare these winds (“upper depleted wind” or UDW hereafter) with the slow winds that are located in the main stream of the O-C plot and possess comparable Carbon abundance range as the depletion wind (“normal-depletion-wind”, or NDW hereafter). We find that the proton density in the UDW is about 27.5% lower than in the NDW. Charge state ratios of O7+/O6+, O7+/O, and O8+/O are decreased by 64.4%, 54.5%, and 52.1%, respectively. The occurrence rate of these UDW is anti-correlated with solar cycle. By tracing the wind along PFSS field lines back to the Sun, we find that the coronal origins of the UDW are more likely associated with quiet Sun regions, while the NDW are mainly associated with active regions and HCS-streamer.

Keywords

• solar wind
• space plasma
• solar corona
• heavy ion composition