Identification of the Coronal Sources of the Fast Solar Wind

Abstract

The present spectroscopic study of the ultraviolet coronal emission in a polar hole, detected on April 6-9, 1996 with the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer aboard the SOHO spacecraft, identifies the inter-plume lanes and background coronal hole regions as the channels where the fast solar wind is preferentially accelerated. In inter-plume lanes, at heliocentric distance 1.7 \rsun, the corona expands at a rate between 105 km/s and 150 km/s, that is, much faster than in plumes where the outflow velocity is between 0 km/s and 65 km/s. The wind velocity is inferred from the Doppler dimming of the O VI $\lambda\lambda$ 1032, 1037 \AA lines, within a range of values, whose lower and upper limit corresponds to anisotropic and isotropic velocity distribution of the oxygen coronal ions, respectively.