Recent advances in coronal heating

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent observational and modeling advances in understanding the solar corona's extreme heating, highlighting current challenges and future research directions in solving the coronal heating problem.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent progress in observational data and numerical models addressing coronal heating mechanisms.

Findings

Recent observations reveal complex heating signatures.

Numerical models simulate various physical processes in the corona.

Future research needs to address unresolved challenges.

Abstract

The solar corona, the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun, is orders of magnitude hotter than the solar surface. This 'coronal heating problem' requires the identification of a heat source to balance losses due to thermal conduction, radiation and (in some locations) convection. The review papers in this Theo Murphy meeting issue present an overview of recent observational findings, large- and small-scale numerical modelling of physical processes occurring in the solar atmosphere and other aspects which may affect our understanding of the proposed heating mechanisms. At the same time, they also set out the directions and challenges which must be tackled by future research. In this brief introduction, we summarize some of the issues and themes which reoccur throughout this issue.