Bibcode
                                    
                            Requerey, I. S.; Del Toro Iniesta, Jose Carlos; Bellot Rubio, Luis R.; Martínez Pillet, Valentín; Solanki, Sami K.; Schmidt, Wolfgang
    Bibliographical reference
                                    The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Volume 229, Issue 1, article id. 14, 11 pp. (2017).
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                        3
            
                        2017
            
  Citations
                                    22
                            Refereed citations
                                    19
                            Description
                                    We study the relation between mesogranular flows, convectively driven
sinks and magnetic fields using high spatial resolution
spectropolarimetric data acquired with the Imaging Magnetograph
eXperiment on board Sunrise. We obtain the horizontal velocity flow
fields of two quiet-Sun regions (31.2 × 31.2 Mm2) via
local correlation tracking. Mesogranular lanes and the central position
of sinks are identified using Lagrange tracers. We find 6.7×
{10}-2 sinks per Mm2 in the two observed regions.
The sinks are located at the mesogranular vertices and turn out to be
associated with (1) horizontal velocity flows converging to a central
point and (2) long-lived downdrafts. The spatial distribution of
magnetic fields in the quiet-Sun is also examined. The strongest
magnetic fields are preferentially located at sinks. We find that 40% of
the pixels with longitudinal components of the magnetic field stronger
than 500 G are located in the close neighborhood of sinks. In contrast,
the small-scale magnetic loops detected by Martínez
González et al. in the same two observed areas do not show any
preferential distribution at mesogranular scales. The study of
individual examples reveals that sinks can play an important role in the
evolution of quiet-Sun magnetic features.