Investigating 4D Coronal Heating Events In MHD Simulations

TL;DR

This paper uses 3D-MHD simulations and a new analysis technique to identify and characterize small-scale coronal heating events, providing insights into their energy distribution and potential role in heating the solar corona.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to analyze 3D Joule heating events in simulations, overcoming observational biases and revealing the significance of nano-events in coronal heating.

Findings

Nano-events release 82% of the resolved energy.

Energy distribution follows a weak power-law with index less than 2.

Short-lived, small spatial events dominate the heating process.

Abstract

One candidate-model for heating the solar corona is magnetic reconnection that embodies Ohmic dissipation of current sheets. When numerous small-scaled magnetic reconnection occur, then it is possible to heat the corona. Due to the limitations of current instrumentation, nanoflares cannot be resolved. But their importance is evaluated via statistics by finding the power-law index of the energy distribution. This method is however biased due to technical and physical reasons. We aim to overcome limitations imposed by observations and statistical analysis. This way, we will identify, and study the small scale impulsive events. We employ a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (3D-MHD) simulation using the \bifrost code. We also employ a new technique to identify the evolution of 3D Joule heating events in the corona. Then, we derive parameters describing the heating events in these locations. We report on the identification of heating events. We obtain the distribution of duration, released energy, and volume. We also find weak power-law correlation between these parameters. In addition, we extract information about geometrical parameters of 2D slices of 3D events, and about the evolution of resolved Joule heating compared to the total Joule heating and the magnetic energy in the corona. Even though the energy power index is less than 2, when classifying the energy release into three categories regarding with respect to the energy release (pico-, nano-, and micro-events), we find that nano-events release $82 \ \%$ of the resolved energy. This fraction corresponds to an energy flux larger than the one needed to heat the corona. It seems that the most popular population is the one containing short-lived, with small spatial extend events.