Does High Plasma-β Dynamics "Load" Active Regions?

Using long-duration observations in the He II 304 Angstrom passband of theSolar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope(EIT) we investigate the spatial and temporal appearance of impulsive intensityfluctuations in the pixel light curves. These passband intensity fluctuationscome from plasma emitting in the chromosphere, transition region and lowestportions of the corona. We see that they are spatially tied to thesupergranular scale and that their rate of occurrence is tied to the unsignedimbalance of the magnetic field in which they are observed. The signature ofthe fluctuations (in space and time) is consistent with their creation bymagnetoconvection forced reconnection that is driven by the flow field in thehigh-beta plasma. The signature of the intensity fluctuations around an activeregion suggest that the bulk of the mass and energy supplied into the activeregion complex observed in the hotter coronal plasma is supplied by thisprocess, dynamically forcing the looped structure from beneath.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, In press ApJ