Evolution Of Coronal Loops Research Articles

Magnetic Reconnection between Loops Accelerated By a Nearby Filament Eruption

Abstract Magnetic reconnection modulated by nonlocal disturbances in the solar atmosphere has been investigated theoretically, but rarely observed. In this study, employing Hα and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images and line-of-sight magnetograms, we report the acceleration of reconnection by an adjacent filament eruption. In Hα images, four groups of chromospheric fibrils are observed to form a saddle-like structure. Among them, two groups of fibrils converge and reconnect. Two newly reconnected fibrils then form and retract away from the reconnection region. In EUV images, similar structures and evolution of coronal loops are identified. The current sheet forms repeatedly at the interface of reconnecting loops, with a width and length of 1–2 and 5.3–7.2 Mm and a reconnection rate of 0.18–0.3. It appears in the EUV low-temperature channels, with an average differential emission measure (DEM) weighed temperature and EM of 2 MK and 2.5 × 1027 cm−5. Plasmoids appear in the current sheet and propagate along it, and then further along the reconnection loops. The filament, located to the southeast of the reconnection region, erupts and pushes away the loops covering the reconnection region. Thereafter, the current sheet has a width and length of 2 and 3.5 Mm and a reconnection rate of 0.57. It becomes much brighter and appears in the EUV high-temperature channels, with an average DEM-weighed temperature and EM of 5.5 MK and 1.7 × 1028 cm−5. In the current sheet, more hotter plasmoids form. More thermal and kinetic energy is hence converted. These results suggest that the reconnection is significantly accelerated by the propagating disturbance caused by the nearby filament eruption.

Oscillation and Evolution of Coronal Loops in a Dynamical Solar Corona

Observations have revealed two regimes of kink oscillations of coronal loops. Large amplitude oscillations excited by impulsive energy releases such as coronal mass ejections are characterised by their strong damping by resonant absorption. Lower amplitude oscillations may also be excited and sustained by the ubiquitous motions present in the corona and so are characterised as being decayless. We perform numerical simulations to study the oscillation and evolution of coronal loops in a dynamical environment. We investigate the observational signatures of kink oscillations and the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in terms of high-resolution seismological and spatial data analysis techniques. We find that low amplitude kink oscillations are capable of generating significant changes in the loop profile which can affect estimates of the transverse loop inhomogeneity based on seismological and forward modelling methods. The disparity between methods may be indicative of nonlinear evolution of coronal loops. The influence on forward modelling estimates could also account for previous observational evidence favouring loops having wider inhomogeneous layers.

Magnetic jam in the corona of the Sun

The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, contains plasma at temperatures of more than a million K, more than 100 times hotter that solar surface. How this gas is heated is a fundamental question tightly interwoven with the structure of the magnetic field in the upper atmosphere. Conducting numerical experiments based on magnetohydrodynamics we account for both the evolving three-dimensional structure of the atmosphere and the complex interaction of magnetic field and plasma. Together this defines the formation and evolution of coronal loops, the basic building block prominently seen in X-rays and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images. The structures seen as coronal loops in the EUV can evolve quite differently from the magnetic field. While the magnetic field continuously expands as new magnetic flux emerges through the solar surface, the plasma gets heated on successively emerging fieldlines creating an EUV loop that remains roughly at the same place. For each snapshot the EUV images outline the magnetic field, but in contrast to the traditional view, the temporal evolution of the magnetic field and the EUV loops can be different. Through this we show that the thermal and the magnetic evolution in the outer atmosphere of a cool star has to be treated together, and cannot be simply separated as done mostly so far.

An Impulsive Heating Model for the Evolution of Coronal Loops

It was suggested by Parker that the solar corona is heated by many small energy release events generally called microflares or nanoflares. More and more observations showed flows and intensity variations in nonflaring loops. Both theories and observations have indicated that the heating of coronal loops should actually be unsteady. Using SOLFTM (Solar Flux Tube Model), we investigate the hydrodynamics of coronal loops undergoing different manners of impulsive heating with the same total energy deposition. The half length of the loops is 110 Mm, a typical length of active region loops. We divide the loops into two categories: loops that experience catastrophic cooling and loops that do not. It is found that when the nanoflare heating sources are in the coronal part, the loops are in non-catastrophic-cooling state and their evolutions are similar. When the heating is localized below the transition region, the loops evolve in quite different ways. It is shown that with increasing number of heating pulses and inter-pulse time, the catastrophic cooling is weakened, delayed, or even disappears altogether.

Analysis of a multi-wavelength time-resolved observation of a coronal loop

Aims.We analyze a well-defined loop system detected in a time-resolved observation in several spectral bands to characterize the structure and evolution of coronal loops. Methods.The dataset includes simultaneous sequences of images in the 171 Å, 195 Å and 284 Å filter bands of TRACE, and in one filter of Yohkoh/SXT, with a time coverage of about 2.5 h, and two rasters taken with SoHO/CDS in twelve relevant lines, forming between (O V 629 Å) and (Fe XVI 360 Å). The loop is initially best seen in the TRACE 195 Å filter band, with some correspondence to the simultaneous SXT images, and later in the 171 Å filter band, with good correspondence to the CDS raster images in the lines with formation temperature around . We have taken as pixel-by-pixel background the latest TRACE, Yohkoh and CDS images where the loop has faded out. We examine the loop morphology evolution, the light curves, the TRACE filter ratio distribution and evolution, the images and emission measure from the CDS spectral lines.Results.Our analysis detects that, after background subtraction, the emission along the loop and its evolution are non-uniform, especially in the 171 Å filter band, and that the TRACE 195/171 filter ratio has a moderately non-uniform distribution along the loop and evolves over time. Both the light curves and the filter ratio evolution indicate a globally cooling loop. Relatively hot plasma may be present at the beginning while, during the first CDS raster, the data indicate a rather moderate thermal structuring of the loop.Conclusions.Our analysis supports a coherent scenario across the different bands and instruments, points out difficulties in diagnostic methods and establishes quantitative basis for detailed forward modeling.

Spatial and Temporal Properties of Hot and Cool Coronal Loops

A suite of images from the XUV Doppler Telescope (XDT), the Yohkoh Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), and the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) allow us to see the whole (T > 1 MK) temperature evolution of coronal loops. The detailed morphological comparison of an active region shows that hot loops seen in SXT (T > 3 MK) and cool loops seen in the the EIT 195 A band (T ~ 1.5 MK) are located in almost alternating manner. The anticoincidence of the hot and the cool loops is conserved for a duration much longer than the estimated cooling timescale. However, both hot and cool loops have counterparts in the intermediate-temperature images. The cross-correlation coefficients are higher for neighboring temperature pairs and lower for pairs with larger temperature differences. These results suggest that loops are not isothermal but rather have a differential emission measure distribution of modest but finite width that peaks at different temperatures for different loops.

Unstable Coronal Loops: Numerical Simulations with Predicted Observational Signatures

We present numerical studies of the nonlinear, resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) evolution of coronal loops. For these simulations we assume that the loops carry no net current, as might be expected if the loop had evolved due to vortex flows. Furthermore the initial equilibrium is taken to be a cylindrical flux tube with line-tied ends. For a given amount of twist in the magnetic field it is well known that once such a loop exceeds a critical length it becomes unstableto ideal MHD instabilities. The early evolution of these instabilities generates large current concentrations. Firstly we show that these current concentrations are consistent with the formation of a current sheet. Magnetic reconnection can only occur in the vicinity of these current concentrations and we therefore couple the resistivity to the local current density. This has the advantage of avoiding resistive diffusion in regions where it should be negligible. We demonstrate the importance of this procedure by comparison with simulations based on a uniform resistivity. From our numerical experiments we are able to estimate some observational signatures for unstable coronal loops. These signatures include: the timescale of the loop brightening; the temperature increase; the energy released and the predicted observable flow speeds. Finally we discuss to what extent these observational signatures are consistent with the properties of transient brightening loops.

The evolution of twisted coronal loops

The evolution of coronal loops in response to slow photospheric twisting motions is investigated using a variety of methods. Firstly, by solving the time-dependent equations it is shown that the field essentially evolves through a sequence of 2-D equilibria with no evidence of rapid dynamic evolution. Secondly, a sequence of 1-D equilibria are shown to provide a remarkably good approximation to the 2-D time-dependent results using a fraction of the computer time. Thus, a substantial investigation of parameter space is now possible. Finally, simple bounds on the 3-D stability of coronal loops are obtained. Exact stability bounds can be found by using these bounds to reduce the region of parameter space requiring further investigation. Twisting the loop too much shows that a 3-D instability must be triggered.