Identifying Observables that can Differentiate Between Impulsive and Footpoint Heating: Time Lags and Intensity Ratios

Abstract

Observations of coronal loops have identified several common loop characteristics, including that loops appear to cool and have higher than expected densities. Two potential heating scenarios have been suggested to explain these observations. One scenario is that the loops are heated by a series of small-scale impulsive heating events, or nanoflares. Another hypothesis is that the heating is quasi-steady and highly-stratified, i.e., ``footpoint heating'. The goal of this paper is to identify observables that can be used to differentiate between these two heating scenarios. For footpoint heating, we vary the heating magnitude and stratification, for impulsive heating, we vary the heating magnitude. We use one-dimensional hydrodynamic codes to calculate the resulting temperature and density evolution and expected lightcurves in four channels of AIA and one channel of XRT. We consider two principal diagnostics: the time lag between the appearance of the loop in two different channels, and the ratio of the peak intensities of the loop in the two channels. We find that 1) footpoint heating can predict longer time lags than impulsive heating, 2) footpoint heating can predict zero or negative time lags, 3) the intensity ratio expected from impulsive heating is confined to a narrow range, while footpoint heating predicts a wider range of intensity ratios, and 4) the range of temperatures expected in impulsive heating is broader than the range of temperatures expected in footpoint heating. This preliminary study identifies observables that may be useful in discriminating between heating models in future work.

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