Longitudinal Waves in Coronal Loops

Abstract

Outwardly propagating intensity disturbances are a common feature in large, quiescent coronal loop structures. In this paper, an overview is given of the observed properties and the theoretical modelling. As a large number of events have been observed and analysed, good statistical results on the estimated parameters have now been obtained. The theoretical modelling mainly focuses on two distinct aspects, namely the observed rapid damping of the perturbations, thought to be due to thermal conduction and the origin of the driver. Leakage of the solar surface p-modes is the main candidate to explain the observed periodicity, due to the strong correlation between loop position and period and the filamentary nature of the observed coronal intensity perturbations. Recent observational results appear to confirm the leakage and subsequent upward propagation of the solar surface 5 minute oscillations into the overlying atmospheric layers.