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Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating

The heating of the Sun’s corona has been explained by several different mechanisms including wave dissipation and magnetic reconnection. While both have been shown capable of supplying the requisite power, neither has been used in a quantitative model of observations fed by measured inputs. Here we...

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Autores principales: Yang, Kai E., Longcope, Dana W., Ding, M. D., Guo, Yang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5814417/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29449655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03056-8
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author Yang, Kai E.
Longcope, Dana W.
Ding, M. D.
Guo, Yang
author_facet Yang, Kai E.
Longcope, Dana W.
Ding, M. D.
Guo, Yang
author_sort Yang, Kai E.
collection PubMed
description The heating of the Sun’s corona has been explained by several different mechanisms including wave dissipation and magnetic reconnection. While both have been shown capable of supplying the requisite power, neither has been used in a quantitative model of observations fed by measured inputs. Here we show that impulsive reconnection is capable of producing an active region corona agreeing both qualitatively and quantitatively with extreme-ultraviolet observations. We calculate the heating power proportional to the velocity difference between magnetic footpoints and the photospheric plasma, called the non-ideal velocity. The length scale of flux elements reconnected in the corona is found to be around 160 km. The differential emission measure of the model corona agrees with that derived using multi-wavelength images. Synthesized extreme-ultraviolet images resemble observations both in their loop-dominated appearance and their intensity histograms. This work provides compelling evidence that impulsive reconnection events are a viable mechanism for heating the corona.
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spelling pubmed-58144172018-02-20 Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating Yang, Kai E. Longcope, Dana W. Ding, M. D. Guo, Yang Nat Commun Article The heating of the Sun’s corona has been explained by several different mechanisms including wave dissipation and magnetic reconnection. While both have been shown capable of supplying the requisite power, neither has been used in a quantitative model of observations fed by measured inputs. Here we show that impulsive reconnection is capable of producing an active region corona agreeing both qualitatively and quantitatively with extreme-ultraviolet observations. We calculate the heating power proportional to the velocity difference between magnetic footpoints and the photospheric plasma, called the non-ideal velocity. The length scale of flux elements reconnected in the corona is found to be around 160 km. The differential emission measure of the model corona agrees with that derived using multi-wavelength images. Synthesized extreme-ultraviolet images resemble observations both in their loop-dominated appearance and their intensity histograms. This work provides compelling evidence that impulsive reconnection events are a viable mechanism for heating the corona. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5814417/ /pubmed/29449655 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03056-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Yang, Kai E.
Longcope, Dana W.
Ding, M. D.
Guo, Yang
Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
title Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
title_full Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
title_fullStr Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
title_full_unstemmed Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
title_short Observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
title_sort observationally quantified reconnection providing a viable mechanism for active region coronal heating
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5814417/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29449655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03056-8
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