Intermittent Coronal Loop Oscillations by Random Energy Releases

Abstract

High-resolution observations by the SOHO and TRACE spacecraft have confirmed the existence of coronal loop oscillations and waves. In a recent work, Mendoza-Briceno et al. studied the heating response of coronal plasma to energy pulses randomly distributed in time and space along coronal loops. In this paper we focus on the oscillatory patterns and other features, such as cool gas blobs traveling along the loop, during the evolution of spatiotemporal randomly heated flux tubes in the corona. The nature of these oscillatory patterns is investigated using wavelet analysis. Periodic features, such as wave packets, with periods of 150-220, 500-600, and 800-1000 s are found. It is also found that the periods increase with the loop length and decrease with the length of the loop segments along which the pulses are injected. On the other hand, the randomly driven intermittent cool plasma blobs that propagate from one footpoint to the other are analyzed. Although plenty of coronal loop oscillations are detected by the cohort of the current high-resolution satellites, there are more controversial observational evidences about the predicted cold plasma blobs.