Solar Coronal Heating Fueled by Random Bursts of Fine-scale Magnetic Reconnection in Turbulent Plasma Regions

Abstract

Coronal heating is a longstanding issue in solar physics as well as plasma physics in general. In recent years, significant resolution improvements of satellite observations have contributed to a deeper understanding of small-scale physics, e.g., magnetic reconnection processes on fine scales inside the turbulent geo-magnetosheath. Coronal plasmas feature turbulent complexity of flows and magnetic fields with similar fine scales, and thus electron magnetic reconnection is very likely to be excited in the coronal region working as one of the ways to heat the solar corona, which offers a possible new mechanism for the nanoflare model proposed by Parker. We in this paper simulate and analyze the magnetic reconnection processes on a fine scale of the electron skin depth, with a particle-in-cell treatment, and estimate its contribution to coronal heating. The result shows that the electron magnetic reconnection can provide substantial heating efficiency for heating the corona to its observed temperature, once the reconnection events are reasonably spread.