The phase mixing of Alfven waves, coordinated modes, and coronal heating

Abstract

view Abstract Citations (87) References (36) Co-Reads Similar Papers Volume Content Graphics Metrics Export Citation NASA/ADS The Phase Mixing of Alfven Waves, Coordinated Modes, and Coronal Heating Parker, E. N. Abstract Phase mixing has been a popular theoretical mechanism invoked to dissipate the photospheric plane shear Alfven waves hypothesized to penetrate up into the coronal hole and solar wind, thereby maintaining the expanding coronal gas at 1.5 million K and serving as the principal energy source for the solar wind. However, phase mixing requires an ignorable coordinate, which is not available in the presumably filamentary coronal hole. The filamentary density and temperature of the coronal hole couple the waves into a coordinated mode with a unique phase velocity omega/k, which provides the other popular theoretical mechanism, viz, resonant absorption where the local Alfven speed C is equal to omega/k. This provides coronal heating at radial distances O(10 solar radii), where it serves to accelerate the solar wind to high velocity. But it does not provide the principal heat input in the first 1-2 solar radii, required by Withbroe's (1988) analysis of the observed structure of the coronal hole. Publication: The Astrophysical Journal Pub Date: July 1991 DOI: 10.1086/170285 Bibcode: 1991ApJ...376..355P Keywords: Magnetohydrodynamic Waves; Radiative Transfer; Solar Corona; Solar Heating; Solar Wind; Heat Sources; Transverse Waves; Wave Equations; Wave Propagation; Solar Physics; RADIATIVE TRANSFER; SUN: CORONA; SUN: SOLAR WIND; WAVE MOTIONS full text sources ADS |