Nonadiabatic Magnetohydrodynamic Waves in a Cylindrical Prominence Thread with Mass Flow

Abstract

High-resolution observations show that oscillations and waves in prominence threads are common and that they are attenuated in a few periods. In addition, observers have also reported the presence of material flows in such prominence fine-structures. Here we investigate the time damping of nonleaky oscillations supported by a homogeneous cylindrical prominence thread embedded in an unbounded corona and with a steady mass flow. Thermal conduction and radiative losses are taken into account as damping mechanisms, and the effect of these nonideal effects and the steady flow on the attenuation of oscillations is assessed. We solve the general dispersion relation for linear, nonadiabatic magnetoacoustic and thermal waves supported by the model and find that slow and thermal modes are efficiently attenuated by nonadiabatic mechanisms. On the contrary, fast kink modes are much less affected and their damping times are much larger than those observed. The presence of flow has no effect on the damping of slow and thermal waves, whereas fast kink waves are more (less) attenuated when they propagate parallel (antiparallel) to the flow direction. Although the presence of steady mass flows improves the efficiency of nonadiabatic mechanisms on the attenuation of transverse, kink oscillations for propagation parallel to the flow, its effect is still not enough to obtain damping times compatible with observations.