Fast magnetoacoustic wave trains of sausage symmetry in cylindrical waveguides of the solar corona

Abstract

Fast magnetoacoustic waves guided along the magnetic field by plasma non-uniformities, in particular coronal loops, fibrils and plumes, are known to be highly dispersive, which leads to the formation of quasi-periodic wave trains excited by a broadband impulsive driver, e.g. a solar flare. We investigated effects of cylindrical geometry on the fast sausage wave train formation. We performed magnetohydrodynamic numerical simulations of fast magnetoacoustic perturbations of a sausage symmetry, propagating from a localised impulsive source along a field-aligned plasma cylinder with a smooth radial profile of the fast speed. The wave trains are found to have pronounced period modulation, with the longer instant period seen in the beginning of the wave train. The wave trains have also a pronounced amplitude modulation. Wavelet spectra of the wave trains have characteristic tadpole features, with the broadband large-amplitude heads preceding low-amplitude quasi-monochromatic tails. The mean period of the wave train is about the transverse fast magnetoacoustic transit time across the cylinder. The mean parallel wavelength is about the diameter of the waveguiding plasma cylinder. Instant periods are longer than the sausage wave cutoff period. The wave train characteristics depend on the fast magnetoacoustic speed in both the internal and external media, and the smoothness of the transverse profile of the equilibrium quantities, and also the spatial size of the initial perturbation. If the initial perturbation is localised at the axis of the cylinder, the wave trains contain higher radial harmonics that have shorter periods.