No abstract

Coronal heating is a big question for modern astronomy. Daily measurement of 985 solar spectral irradiances (SSIs) at the spectral intervals 1-39 nm and 116-2416 nm during March 1 2003 to October 28 2017 is utilized to investigate characteristics of solar rotation in the solar atmosphere by means of the Lomb -Scargle periodogram method to calculate their power spectra. The rotation period of coronal plasma is obtained to be 26.3 days, and that of the solar atmosphere at the bottom of the photosphere modulated by magnetic structures is 27.5 days. Here we report for the first time that unexpectedly the coronal atmosphere is found to rotate faster than the underlying photosphere. When time series of SSIs are divided into different cycles, and the ascending and descending periods of a solar cycle, rotation rate in the corona is also found to be larger than that in the photosphere, and this actually gives hidden evidence: it is small-scale magnetic activity that heats the corona.

Differential rotation is the basis of the solar dynamo theory. Synoptic maps of He I intensity from Carrington rotations 2032–2135 are utilized to investigate the differential rotation of the solar chromosphere in the He I absorption line. The chromosphere is surprisingly found to rotate faster than the photosphere below it. The anomalous heating of the chromosphere and corona has been a big problem in modern astronomy. It is speculated that the small-scale magnetic elements with magnetic flux in the range of (2.9–32.0) × 1018 Mx, which are anchored in the leptocline, heat the quiet chromosphere to present the anomalous temperature increase, causing it to rotate at the same rate as the leptocline. The differential of rotation rate in the chromosphere is found to be strengthened by strong magnetic fields, but in stark contrast, at the photosphere strong magnetic fields repress the differential of rotation rate. A plausible explanation is given for these findings.