Role of Compressive Viscosity and Thermal Conductivity on the Damping of Slow Waves in Coronal Loops with and Without Heating–Cooling Imbalance

Abstract

In the present paper, we derive a new dispersion relation for slow magnetoacoustic waves invoking the effect of thermal conductivity, compressive viscosity, radiation and unknown heating term along with the consideration of heating cooling imbalance from linearized MHD equations. We solve the general dispersion relation to understand role of compressive viscosity and thermal conductivity in damping of the slow waves in coronal loops with and without heating cooling imbalance. We have analyzed wave damping for the range of loop length $L$=50-500 Mm, temperature $T$=5-30 MK, and density $\rho$=10$^{-11}$-10$^{-9}$ kg m$^{-3}$. It was found that inclusion of compressive viscosity along with thermal conductivity significantly enhances the damping of fundamental mode oscillations in shorter (e.g., $L$=50 Mm) and super-hot ($T>$10 MK) loops. However, role of the viscosity in damping is insignificant in longer (e.g., $L$=500 Mm) and hot loops (T$\leq$10 MK) where, instead, thermal conductivity along with the presence of heating cooling imbalance plays a dominant role. For the shorter loops at the super-hot regime of the temperature, increment in loop density substantially enhances damping of the fundamental modes due to thermal conductivity when the viscosity is absent, however, when the compressive viscosity is added the increase in density substantially weakens damping. Thermal conductivity alone is found to play a dominant role in longer loops at lower temperatures (T$\leq$10 MK), while compressive viscosity dominates in damping at super-hot temperatures ($T>$10 MK) in shorter loops. The predicted scaling law between damping time ($\tau$) and wave period ($P$) is found to better match to observed SUMER oscillations when heating cooling imbalance is taken into account in addition to thermal conductivity and compressive viscosity for the damping of the fundamental slow mode oscillations.