Observational Evidence of Vortex-driven Information Transfer in the Solar Atmosphere: Insights from S unrise iii

Using high-resolution observations from the TuMag instrument aboard the Sunrise iii solar observatory balloon mission, we investigate solar vortices in the lower atmosphere. First, we identify vortices by extracting coherent dynamical patterns from intensity data using morphological analysis combined with spectral proper orthogonal decomposition applied to Mg I time series that probe the photosphere and lower chromosphere. We found that ∼8.5 × 10 4 vortices may be present on the Sun at any given time, with an average lifetime of τ ≈ 27 minutes . To investigate vortex-mediated cross-layer coupling, we apply Granger causality (GC), which tests whether past fluctuations in one atmospheric layer carry statistically significant predictive power for future fluctuations in another, serving as a statistical proxy for directed dynamical coupling potentially associated with energy and momentum transfer. A pixel-to-pixel GC analysis reveals enhanced and spatially organized lower-atmospheric coupling within vortices, with statistically dominant photosphere-to-chromosphere influence in some locations and the reverse in others. This locally enhanced bidirectional spatial pattern of influence presents morphology consistent with the vortex-driven vertical Poynting flux distribution predicted by numerical simulations, suggesting that the coupling inferred from GC traces dynamical interactions associated with vortex-driven energy transport across atmospheric layers. On average, the directional asymmetry favors photosphere-to-chromosphere predictive coupling. Within vortex regions, past photospheric fluctuations provide ≈53% stronger predictive power for future chromospheric fluctuations than in nonvortex regions over a lag of 4.5 minutes. These results provide the first observational evidence of enhanced information transfer between atmospheric layers associated with solar vortices.