Investigating 4D Coronal Heating Events In MHD Simulations

Abstract

One candidate-model for heating the solar corona is magnetic reconnection that embodies Ohmic dissipation of current sheets. When numerous small-scaled magnetic reconnection occur, then it is possible to heat the corona. Due to the limitations of current instrumentation, nanoflares cannot be resolved. But their importance is evaluated via statistics by finding the power-law index of the energy distribution. This method is however biased due to technical and physical reasons. We aim to overcome limitations imposed by observations and statistical analysis. This way, we will identify, and study the small scale impulsive events. We employ a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (3D-MHD) simulation using the \bifrost code. We also employ a new technique to identify the evolution of 3D Joule heating events in the corona. Then, we derive parameters describing the heating events in these locations. We report on the identification of heating events. We obtain the distribution of duration, released energy, and volume. We also find weak power-law correlation between these parameters. In addition, we extract information about geometrical parameters of 2D slices of 3D events, and about the evolution of resolved Joule heating compared to the total Joule heating and the magnetic energy in the corona. Even though the energy power index is less than 2, when classifying the energy release into three categories regarding with respect to the energy release (pico-, nano-, and micro-events), we find that nano-events release $82\%$ of the resolved energy. This fraction corresponds to an energy flux larger than the one needed to heat the corona. It seems that the most popular population is the one containing short-lived, with small spatial extend events.

9 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (6)

• 25 Years of Self-Organized Criticality: Solar and Astrophysics
• A publicly available simulation of an enhanced network region of the Sun
• Automated Solar Flare Statistics in Soft X-rays over 37 Years of GOES Observations - The Invariance of Self-Organized Criticality during Three Solar Cycles
• Numerical Simulations of Coronal Heating through Footpoint Braiding
• Observational Signatures of Coronal Loop Heating and Cooling Driven by Footpoint Shuffling
• Identification of coronal heating events in 3D simulations

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Corona and XUV emission modelling of the Sun and Sun-like stars
• The Role of High-frequency Transverse Oscillations in Coronal Heating
• Formation and Evolution of Coherent Structures in 3D Strongly Turbulent Magnetized Plasmas
• Particle heating and acceleration by reconnecting and non-reconnecting Current Sheets
• Nanoflare Diagnostics from Magnetohydrodynamic Heating Profiles