Related papers: Relating magnetic reconnection to coronal heating
The Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, is maintained at mega-Kelvin temperatures and fills the heliosphere with a supersonic outflowing wind. The dissipation of magnetic waves and direct electric currents are likely to be the most…
Solar eruptive events such as coronal mass ejections and eruptive flares are frequently associated with the emergence of magnetic flux from the convection zone into the corona. We use three dimensional magnetohydrodynamic numerical…
A theory for the heating of coronal magnetic flux ropes is developed. The dissipated magnetic energy has two distinct contributions: (1) energy injected into the corona as a result of granule-scale, random footpoint motions, and (2) energy…
The magnetic field plays a crucial role in heating the solar corona, but the exact energy release mechanism(s) is(are) still unknown. Here, we investigate in detail, the process of magnetic energy release in a situation where two initially…
When magnetic field in the solar convection zone buoyantly rises to pierce the visible solar surface (photosphere), the atmosphere (corona) above this surface must respond in some way. One response of the coronal field to photospheric…
Cool stars like our Sun are surrounded by a million degree hot outer atmosphere, the corona. Since more than 60 years the physical nature of the processes heating the corona to temperatures well in excess of those on the stellar surface…
There is currently no explanation of why the corona has the temperature and density it has. We present a model which explains how the dynamics of magnetic reconnection regulates the conditions in the corona. A bifurcation in magnetic…
The emergence of magnetic flux from the convection zone into the corona is an important process for the dynamical evolution of the coronal magnetic field. In this paper we extend our previous numerical investigations, by looking at the…
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…
The question why the solar corona is much hotter than the visible solar surface still puzzles solar researchers. Most theories of the coronal heating involve a tight coupling between the coronal magnetic field and the associated thermal…
Magnetic reconnection in the quiet Sun is a phenomenon that is consistently observed, and it has recently become feasible to simulate via 3D numerical models of realistically stratified and convection-driven reconnection. We aim to…
We simulate the buoyant rise of a magnetic flux rope from the solar convection zone into the corona to better understand the energetic coupling of the solar interior to the corona. The magnetohydrodynamic model addresses the physics of…
Alfven waves created by sub-photospheric motions or by magnetic reconnection in the low solar atmosphere seem good candidates for coronal heating. However, the corona is also likely to be heated more directly by magnetic reconnection, with…
The coronal heating problem remains one of the most challenging questions in solar physics. The energy driving coronal heating is widely understood to be associated with convective motions below the photosphere. Recent high-resolution…
In this paper we propose that flux cancellation on small granular scales ($\lesssim 1000$ km) ubiquitously drives reconnection at a multitude of sites in the low solar atmosphere, contributing to chromospheric/coronal heating and the…
We argue that magnetic reconnection plays the determining role in many of the various manifestations of solar activity. In particular, it is the trigger mechanism for the most energetic of solar events, coronal mass ejections and eruptive…
We present the results of a set of three-dimensional numerical simulations of magnetic flux emergence from below the photosphere into the corona that include a uniform and horizontal coronal magnetic field mimicking a pre-existing…
One of the greatest challenges in solar physics is understanding the heating of the Sun's corona. Most theories for coronal heating postulate that free energy in the form of magnetic twist/stress is injected by the photosphere into the…
Coronal plasma in the cores of solar active regions is impulsively heated to more than 5 MK. The nature and location of the magnetic energy source responsible for such impulsive heating is poorly understood. Using observations of seven…
Turbulence, magnetic reconnection, and shocks can be present in explosively unstable plasmas, forming a new electromagnetic environment, which we call here turbulent reconnection, and where spontaneous formation of current sheets takes…