Dislocations in magnetohydrodynamic waves in a stellar atmosphere

Abstract

We describe the presence of wavefront dislocations in magnetohydrodynamic waves in stratified stellar atmospheres. Scalar dislocations such as edges and vortices can appear in Alfv\'en waves, as well as in general magneto-acoustic waves. We detect those dislocations in observations of magnetohydrodynamic waves in sunspots in the solar chromosphere. Through the measured charge of all the dislocations observed, we can give for the first time estimates of the modal contribution in the waves propagating along magnetic fields in solar sunspots.