Issue |
A&A
Volume 644, December 2020
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A130 | |
Number of page(s) | 29 | |
Section | The Sun and the Heliosphere | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202039099 | |
Published online | 14 December 2020 |
Impulsive coronal heating during the interaction of surface magnetic fields in the lower solar atmosphere⋆
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
e-mail: chitta@mps.mpg.de
2
St Andrews University, Mathematics Institute, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK
3
School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, 446-701 Gyeonggi, Korea
Received:
4
August
2020
Accepted:
23
October
2020
Coronal plasma in the cores of solar active regions is impulsively heated to more than 5 MK. The nature and location of the magnetic energy source responsible for such impulsive heating is poorly understood. Using observations of seven active regions from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we found that a majority of coronal loops hosting hot plasma have at least one footpoint rooted in regions of interacting mixed magnetic polarity at the solar surface. In cases when co-temporal observations from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph space mission are available, we found spectroscopic evidence for magnetic reconnection at the base of the hot coronal loops. Our analysis suggests that interactions of magnetic patches of opposite polarity at the solar surface and the associated energy release during reconnection are key to impulsive coronal heating.
Key words: magnetic reconnection / Sun: chromosphere / Sun: corona / Sun: magnetic fields / Sun: transition region / Sun: flares
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© L. P. Chitta et al. 2020
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
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