Abstract

Taking the effect of two-fluid motion of plasma in Alfven waves into account, a nonzero parallel electric field can rise within the wave itself under collisionless conditions. This leads to a kinetic dissipation of Alfven waves by the wave-particle resonant interaction and electron heating along the ambient magnetic field lines. Employing the drift kinetic equation, we investigated this electron-heating mechanism under the cool ion approximation. The result shows that the damping rate and the heating rate obviously depend on the strength distribution of the ambient magnetic field, and that they reach their maximum values at B-0 = B-m and B-0 = (1 + 2 alpha)B-1/2(m), respectively, for the perturbed field of delta B proportional to B-0(alpha), where B-m is the ambient magnetic field strength when upsilon(A) = upsilon(Te). Finally, we propose that this heating mechanism can be applied to explain the brightness distribution of solar soft X-ray coronal loops.

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