The Variability of Solar Coronal Abundances in Active Regions and the Quiet Sun

Measurements of elemental abundances hold important clues to how mass and energy flow through the solar atmosphere. Variations in abundances are organized by an element’s first ionization potential (FIP), and many previous studies have assumed that low FIP (less than 10 eV) elements are enriched by a factor of 3-4 in the corona. In this paper, we use spatially resolved observations from the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on board the Hinode spacecraft to examine the spatial variability of elemental abundance in and around active regions. We find substantial variations within some active regions. In general, however, we find that the enrichment of low FIP elements is limited to bright, active region structures. In faint active region structures and in the dark, quiet regions around active regions, the measured abundances are close to photospheric. These measurements use the ratio of low FIP Si to high FIP S. Similar conclusions concerning quiet Sun regions have been reached recently by Del Zanna using full-Sun spectra. He has found that the coronal quiet Sun (at temperatures greater than 1 MK) has photospheric abundances. Transition region abundances (at temperatures less than 1 MK in the solar atmosphere) have been found to be photospheric. These results and results from this paper suggest that a coronal composition is not a general property of million-degree plasma, but is limited to bright active region loops, and is variable.