{
  "abstract": "Vortices are observed throughout the solar atmosphere, spanning a wide range of spatial scales. Although small-scale vortices have been studied extensively, mesoscale vortices remain less explored, and it is still unclear whether they can be reliably recovered from observations. Mesogranular-scale motions are recovered from the R2D2 simulations by applying Gaussian spatial smoothing to the horizontal velocity field with full width at half maximum (FWHM) values of 2.5-4.0 Mm. To evaluate the accuracy of local correlation tracking (LCT) and its suitability for identifying mesogranular vortices, we apply LCT to synthetic intensity maps at $τ= 1$ using the same spatial windows and temporal averaging windows of 10-60 minutes. Vortices are identified in both the reference and LCT-derived velocity fields using the $Γ$ method. For all tested parameter combinations, LCT underestimates the number of mesogranular-scale vortices. The best overall recovery is obtained for relatively small spatial smoothing scales (FWHM $\\leq 3.5$ Mm) and short averaging windows ($\\leq 20$ minutes), which provide the most reliable vorticity and lifetime statistics while maintaining strong agreement in vortex radius and area distributions. Our analysis shows that only a modest fraction of LCT-detected vortices correspond to vortices identified in the reference velocity field (3.54%-17.88%), depending on FWHM and temporal averaging. This indicates that vortex-driven dynamics inferred from LCT-detected vortices should be interpreted with caution. Our results suggest that applying the $Γ$ method to LCT-derived velocity fields can recover useful statistical properties of mesoscale vortical structures, especially their temporal trends and characteristic sizes.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": "Journal reference: Astrophys. J. 1010, 236 (2026)",
  "arxiv": "2610.27222",
  "author_total": 7,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Mashael Aldhafeeri"
    },
    {
      "name": "Suzana S. A. Silva"
    },
    {
      "name": "Istvan Ballai"
    },
    {
      "name": "Gary Verth"
    },
    {
      "name": "Haruhisa Iijima"
    },
    {
      "name": "Hideyuki Hotta"
    },
    {
      "name": "Viktor Fedun"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6zmk5ybgpj2hv.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.27222",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "6zmk5ybgpj2hv",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27222",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.SR"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.27222",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-19",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6zmk5ybgpj2hv.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:34:04Z",
      "native_id": "2610.27222",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27222"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.SR",
      "subfield": "stellar"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Large-scale Vortices in the Solar Photosphere: Statistical Properties and the Reliability of Local Correlation Tracking",
  "title_text": "Large-scale Vortices in the Solar Photosphere: Statistical Properties and the Reliability of Local Correlation Tracking",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:34:04Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6zmk5ybgpj2hv",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": [
    {
      "doi": "10.3847/1538-4357/aea904",
      "pid": "bcyf257hgdtje",
      "relation": "published-as",
      "title": "Large-scale Vortices in the Solar Photosphere: Statistical Properties and the Reliability of Local Correlation Tracking",
      "venue": "The Astrophysical Journal"
    }
  ]
}