A new paradigm for solar coronal heating

Abstract

The solar coronal heating problem refers to the question why the temperature of the Sun's corona is more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of its surface. Almost 70 years after the discovery, this puzzle is still one of the major challenges in astrophysics. The current basic paradigm of coronal heating is unable to explain all the observational features of the heating. Here we argue that a new paradigm is required to solve the puzzle in a self-consistent manner. The alternative approach is based on the kinetic theory of drift waves. We show, with qualitative and quantitative arguments, that the drift waves have the potential to satisfy all coronal heating requirements.

References in corpus (3)

• On Solving the Coronal Heating Problem
• The effect of temperature anisotropy on observations of Doppler dimming and pumping in the inner corona
• Growing drift-cyclotron modes in the hot solar atmosphere

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Drift waves in the corona: heating and acceleration of ions at frequencies far below the gyro frequency
• Kinetic instability of drift-Alfven waves in solar corona and stochastic heating
• Electric fields in solar magnetic structures due to gradient driven instabilities: heating and acceleration of particles
• Self Heating of Corona by Electrostatic Fields Driven by Sheared Flows
• New features of ion acoustic waves in inhomogeneous and permeating plasmas
• Drift wave stabilized by an additional streaming ion or plasma population
• Solar nanoflares and other smaller energy release events as growing drift waves
• 3-D exact analytical solutions of two fluid plasma, MHD and neutral fluid equations for the creation of ordered structures as well as jet-like flows
• Energy in density gradient