Modeling Active Region Transient Brightenings Observed with XRT as Multi-Stranded Loops

Abstract

Strong evidence exists that coronal loops as observed in EUV and soft X-rays may not be monolithic isotropic structures, but can often be more accurately modeled as bundles of independent strands. Modeling the observed active region transient brightenings (ARTBs) within this framework allows exploration of the energetic ramifications and characteristics of these stratified structures. Here we present a simple method of detecting and modeling ARTBs observed with the Hinode/X-Ray Telescope (XRT) as groups of 0-dimensional strands, which allows us to probe parameter space to understand better the spatial and temporal dependence of strand heating in impulsively heated loops. This partially automated method can be used to analyze a large number of observations to gain a statistical insight into the parameters of coronal structures including the number of heating events required in a given model to fit the observations. In this article we present the methodology, and demonstrate its use in detecting and modeling ARTBs in a sample data set from Hinode/XRT. These initial results show that in general, multiple heating events are necessary to reproduce observed ARTBs, but the spatial dependence of these heating events could not yet be established.

arXiv comment19 pages, 5 figures, 4 Tables, Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

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• Solar Active Region Heating Diagnostics from High Temperature Emission using the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS)
• Magnetic Energy Powers the Corona: How We Can Understand its 3D Storage & Release
• Forward Modeling Transient Brightenings and Microflares around an Active Region Observed with Hi-C
• A publicly available multi-observatory data set of an enhanced network patch from the Photosphere to Corona