Turbulence, Energy Transfers and Reconnection in Compressible Coronal Heating Field-line Tangling Models

TL;DR

This paper extends MHD turbulence models for coronal heating to include thermodynamics and radiation, revealing boundary-concentrated emission similar to solar atmospheric layers.

Contribution

It introduces HYPERION, a new 3D compressible MHD code that incorporates thermal conduction and radiative effects in coronal heating simulations.

Findings

Thermal conduction causes boundary-focused radiative emission.

The model reproduces features akin to the chromosphere and corona.

HYPERION enables more realistic thermodynamic simulations of the solar atmosphere.

Abstract

MHD turbulence has long been proposed as a mechanism for the heating of coronal loops in the framework of the Parker scenario for coronal heating. So far most of the studies have focused on its dynamical properties without considering its thermodynamical and radiative features, because of the very demanding computational requirements. In this paper we extend this previous research to the compressible regime, including an energy equation, by using HYPERION, a new parallelized, viscoresistive, three-dimensional compressible MHD code. HYPERION employs a Fourier collocation -- finite difference spatial discretization, and uses a third-order Runge-Kutta temporal discretization. We show that the implementation of a thermal conduction parallel to the DC magnetic field induces a radiative emission concentrated at the boundaries, with properties similar to the chromosphere--transition region--corona system.