Energy Distribution of Nanoflares in Three-Dimensional Simulations of Coronal Heating

TL;DR

This study uses 3D simulations of coronal heating to analyze nanoflare energy distributions, revealing statistical properties and comparing them with solar observations, advancing understanding of solar flare energetics.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed statistical analysis of nanoflare energy distributions from large-scale 3D RMHD simulations, bridging simulation results with observational data.

Findings

Energy distribution of nanoflares follows a specific power-law.

Simulation results are consistent with observed solar flare statistics.

Scaling of heating rate with Lundquist number is established.

Abstract

In a recent computational campaign [Ng et al., Astrophys. J. 747, 109, 2012] to investigate a three-dimensional model of coronal heating using reduced magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD), we have obtained scaling results of heating rate versus Lundquist number based on a series of runs in which random photospheric motions are imposed for hundreds to thousands of Alfv\'en time in order to obtain converged statistical values. Using this collection of numerical data, we have performed additional statistical analysis related to the formation of current sheets and heating events, or nanoflares [Parker, Astrophys. J. 330, 474, 1988]. While there have been many observations of the energy distribution of solar flares, there have not been many results based on large-scale three-dimensional direct simulations due to obvious numerical difficulties. We will present energy distributions and other statistics based on our simulations, calculated using a method employed in [Dmitruk & G\'omez, Astrophys. J., 484, L83, 1997]. We will also make comparisons of our results with observations.