Stability analysis of quiescent prominences using thermodynamic irreversible energy principles

¹ Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio, CONICET, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: costa@iafe.uba.ar
² Departamento de Física, FCEyN - UBA, Argentina
³ Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Facultad de Ingeniería, UR, Uruguay

Received: 7 May 2004
Accepted: 15 July 2004

Abstract

Using methods of non-equilibrium thermodynamics that extend and generalize the MHD energy principle of Bernstein et al. (1958, Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 244, 17) we develop a formalism in order to analyze the stability properties of prominence models considered as dissipative states i.e. states far form thermodynamic equilibrium. As an example, the criterion is applied to the Kippenhahn-Schlüter model (hereafter K-S) considering the addition of dissipative terms in the coupled system of equations: the balance of energy equation and the equation of motion. We show from this application, that periods corresponding to typical oscillations of the chromosphere and photosphere (3 and 5 min respectively), that were reported as observations of the prominence structure, can be explained as internal modes of the prominence itself. This is an alternative explanation to the one that supposes that the source of these perturbations are the cold foot chromospheric and photospheric basis.