Time damping of non-adiabatic magnetohydrodynamic waves in a partially ionized prominence plasma: Effect of helium

TL;DR

This study investigates how helium influences the damping of non-adiabatic MHD waves in partially ionized prominence plasmas, concluding that helium's effect is minor at realistic abundances, simplifying wave damping models.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of helium's impact on wave damping in prominence plasmas, showing its effects are negligible at typical helium abundances.

Findings

Helium increases ion-neutral collision and thermal conduction effects.

Realistic helium abundance (~10%) has minor influence on wave damping.

Helium can be neglected in MHD wave studies of prominence plasmas.

Abstract

Prominences are partially ionized, magnetized plasmas embedded in the solar corona. Damped oscillations and propagating waves are commonly observed. These oscillations have been interpreted in terms of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves. Ion-neutral collisions and non-adiabatic effects (radiation losses and thermal conduction) have been proposed as damping mechanisms. We study the effect of the presence of helium on the time damping of non-adiabatic MHD waves in a plasma composed by electrons, protons, neutral hydrogen, neutral helium (He I), and singly ionized helium (He II) in the single-fluid approximation. The dispersion relation of linear non-adiabatic MHD waves in a homogeneous, unbounded, and partially ionized prominence medium is derived. The period and the damping time of Alfven, slow, fast, and thermal waves are computed. A parametric study of the ratio of the damping time to the period with respect to the helium abundance is performed. The efficiency of ion-neutral collisions as well as thermal conduction is increased by the presence of helium. However, if realistic abundances of helium in prominences (~10%) are considered, this effect has a minor influence on the wave damping. The presence of helium can be safely neglected in studies of MHD waves in partially ionized prominence plasmas.