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Spatio-temporal analysis of chromospheric heating in a plage region

Our knowledge of the heating mechanisms that are at work in the chromosphere of plage regions remains highly unconstrained from observational studies. The purpose of our study is to estimate the chromospheric heating terms from a plage dataset, characterize their spatio-temporal distribution and set constraints on the heating processes that are at work. We make use of NLTE inversions to infer a model of the photosphere and chromosphere of a plage dataset acquired with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. We use this model atmosphere to calculate the chromospheric radiative losses from H i, Ca ii and Mg ii atoms. We approximate the chromospheric heating terms by the net radiative losses predicted by the inverted model. In order to make the analysis of time-series over a large field-of-view computationally tractable, we make use of a neural network. In the lower chromosphere, the contribution from the Ca ii lines is dominant and located in the surroundings of the photospheric footpoints. In the upper chromosphere, the H i contribution is dominant. Radiative losses in the upper chromosphere form an homogeneous patch that covers the plage region. The net radiative losses can be split in a periodic component with an average amplitude of ampQ = 7.6 kW m^{-2} and a static (or very slowly evolving) component with a mean value of -26.1 kW m^{-2}. Our interpretation is that in the lower chromosphere, the radiative losses are tracing the sharp lower edge of the hot magnetic canopy, where the electric current is expected to be large. In the upper chromosphere, both the magnetic field and the distribution of net radiative losses are room-filling, whereas the amplitude of the periodic component is largest. Our results suggest that acoustic wave heating may be responsible for one third of the energy deposition in the upper chromosphere, whereas other heating mechanisms must be responsible for the rest.