Are the Brightest Coronal Loops Always Rooted in Mixed-polarity Magnetic Flux?

Abstract

Abstract A recent study demonstrated that freedom of convection and strength of magnetic field in the photospheric feet of active-region (AR) coronal loops, together, can engender or quench heating in them. Other studies stress that magnetic flux cancellation at the loop-feet potentially drives heating in loops. We follow 24 hr movies of a bipolar AR, using extreme ultraviolet images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly/Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and line-of-sight (LOS) magnetograms from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI)/SDO, to examine magnetic polarities at the feet of 23 of the brightest coronal loops. We derived Fe xviii emission (hot-94) images (using the Warren et al. method) to select the hottest/brightest loops, and confirm their footpoint locations via non-force-free field extrapolations. From 6″ × 6″ boxes centered at each loop foot in LOS magnetograms we find that ∼40% of the loops have both feet in unipolar flux, and ∼60% of the loops have at least one foot in mixed-polarity flux. The loops with both feet unipolar are ∼15% shorter lived on average than the loops having mixed-polarity foot-point flux, but their peak-intensity averages are equal. The presence of mixed-polarity magnetic flux in at least one foot in the majority of the loops suggests that flux cancellation at the footpoints may drive most of the heating. But the absence of mixed-polarity magnetic flux (to the detection limit of HMI) in ∼40% of the loops suggests that flux cancellation may not be necessary to drive heating in coronal loops—magnetoconvection and field strength at both loop feet possibly drive much of the heating, even in the cases where a loop foot presents mixed-polarity magnetic flux.