On the "extended" solar cycle in coronal emission

Abstract

Butterfly diagrams (latitude-time plots) of coronal emission show a zone of enhanced brightness that appears near the poles just after solar maximum and migrates toward lower latitudes; a bifurcation seems to occur at sunspot minimum, with one branch continuing to migrate equatorward with the sunspots of the new cycle and the other branch heading back to the poles. The resulting patterns have been likened to those seen in torsional oscillations and have been taken as evidence for an extended solar cycle lasting over 17 yr. In order to clarify the nature of the overlapping bands of coronal emission, we construct butterfly diagrams from green-line simulations covering the period 1967-2009 and from 19.5 nm and 30.4 nm observations taken with the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope during 1996-2009. As anticipated from earlier studies, we find that the high-latitude enhancements mark the footpoint areas of closed loops with one end rooted outside the evolving boundaries of the polar coronal holes. The strong underlying fields were built up over the declining phase of the cycle through the poleward transport of active-region flux by the surface meridional flow. Rather than being a precursor of the new-cycle sunspot activity zone, the high-latitude emission forms a physically distinct, U-shaped band that curves upward again as active-region fields emerge at midlatitudes and reconnect with the receding polar-hole boundaries. We conclude that the so-called extended cycle in coronal emission is a manifestation not of early new-cycle activity, but of the poleward concentration of old-cycle trailing-polarity flux by meridional flow. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..