Thursday

Over recent decades, observational evidence has shown that waves are ubiquitous in the solar corona. As such, wave-based heating mechanisms are attracting increased attention in the context of the coronal heating problem.

Using the numerical code Lare3d, we model a density-enhanced coronal loop as a straight, magnetic flux tube. We impose a single-pulse, sinusoidal driver at one of the footpoints. This driver initiates a propagating kink wave, which mode couples to torsional Alfvén waves in the shell region (edges) of the loop. Due to the non-uniform density profile, these Alfvénic waves dissipate through phase mixing and increase the temperature in the boundary of the loop. We investigate whether phase mixing can maintain the million degree temperature of the solar corona. In particular, we focus on how the timescale of this heating process compares to the timescales of thermal conduction and optically thin radation in the corona, by considering the long-term evolution of the plasma.