A Comprehensive View of Three-minute Umbral Oscillations

Our recent observations of the Sun through strong spectral lines have revealed several important properties of the three-minute umbral oscillations inside sunspots -- the oscillations of intensity and Doppler velocity with periods of 2 to 3 minutes. The oscillations usually occur in the form of a time series of oscillation packets each of which lasts 10 to 20 minutes, not as continuous trains. Each oscillation packet is characterized by a singly peaked power spectrum of velocity oscillation. The oscillations propagate in the vertical direction from the photosphere to the corona. In the upper chromosphere, they develop into shocks that eventually collide with the transition region. When shocks propagate along a highly inclined direction, the merging of two successive shocks can take place. Once they enter the corona, they change to linear compressional waves. In the image plane, the three-minute oscillations propagate with high speeds in the transverse direction as well, usually propagating radially outwards from a point, and sometimes accompanying spiraling patterns of Doppler velocity. These observational properties can be theoretically explained by postulating the spatio-temporally localized source of fast MHD waves at a depth of about 2000 km below the surface, the excitation of slow MHD waves via mode conversion near the photosphere, and the resonance of the slow waves in the photospheric layer below the temperature minimum, and the nonlinear development of slow waves in the chromosphere.