Description
Alfvénic waves form a key component on the Sun's atmosphere, found to be ubiquitous in the chromosphere, corona and solar wind. While not confirmed, they are believed to play a critical role in energy transport from the convective motions out into the heliosphere;
however, many open questions remain about their journey. The DKI Solar Telescope has started providing science quality data, with Cryo-NIRSP delivering high resolution (spatial, temporal, spectral) views of the corona in the infrared. During this talk I will
discuss several fundamental discoveries about Alfvénic waves that we have been afforded by the novel data from Cryo-NIRSP. Specifically, we show evidence that i) low frequency waves are the dominant energy carrier; ii) the waves are primarily excited by the
photospheric convection; iii) there are at least 3 separate sources for the waves, with evidence for the role of p-modes and an unknown source; iv) high frequency waves excited in the photosphere are strongly damped by partial ionisation in the chromosphere
before they reach the corona; v) the corona is replete with torsional Alfvén waves at small-scales. This list of discoveries provides observational confirmation for several theoretically proposed aspects of wave propagation. We also show that the torsional
Alfven modes carry a comparable amount of energy to the kink modes, indicating the Alfvénic modes carry enough energy to meet the heating and momentum budgets of the quiet Sun and solar wind.
