Statistical Analysis of Supersonic Downflows in Sunspot Penumbrae

Sunspot penumbrae show supersonic downflow patches along the periphery. These patches are believed to be the return channels of the Evershed flow. There was previous study to investigate their structure in detail using Hinode SOT/SP observations (M. van Noort et al. 2013) but their data sample was only two sunspots. To make general description it needs to check more sunspot sample. We selected 242 downflow patches of 17 sunspots using Hinode SOT/SP observations from 2006 to 2012. Height-dependent maps of atmospheric parameters of these downflows was produced by using HeLix which was height dependent LTE inversion code of Stokes profiles. The inversion code at high resolution allows for the accurate determination of small scale structures. The recovered atmospheric structure of three layers indicates that regions with very high downflow velocities contain very strong magnetic fields reaching up to 7kG. The higher downflow velocity patches have bigger patch size. Magnetic fields of downflow patches are more vertical while penumbra shows horizontal field and neighbor of downflow patches have opposite polarity. Temperature of downflow patches at highest layer have more strong value than penumbra at deepest layer. The direction of velocity of downflow patches at highest layer have two branches. These result shows that we can expect some heating precess in the middle of layer.