Resonant absorption of kink oscillations in coronal flux tubes with continuous magnetic twist

TL;DR

This study models resonant damping of kink MHD waves in twisted solar coronal flux tubes, revealing how magnetic twist influences wave damping rates and matching observed rapid damping phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic flux tube model with continuous magnetic twist and inhomogeneous density, deriving the dispersion relation and analyzing wave damping dependence on twist and wavenumber.

Findings

Rapid damping of kink waves matches observations.

Magnetic twist sign determines damping behavior.

Resonant absorption occurs within specific twist parameter ranges.

Abstract

There are observational evidences for the existence of twisted magnetic field in the solar corona. Here, we have investigated resonant damping of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) kink waves in magnetic flux tubes. A realistic model of the tube with continuous magnetic twist and radially inhomogeneous density profile has been considered. We have obtained the dispersion relation of the kink wave using the solution to the linear MHD equations outside the density inhomogeneity and the appropriate connection formula to the solutions across the thin transitional boundary layer. The dependence of the oscillation frequency and damping rate of the waves on the twist parameter and longitudinal wavenumber has been investigated. For the flux tube parameters considered in this paper, we obtain rapid damping of the kink waves comparable to the observations. In order to justify this rapid damping, depending on the sign of the azimuthal kink mode number, $m=+1$ or $m=-1$, the background magnetic field must have left handed or right handed twisted profile, respectively. For the model considered here, the resonant absorption occurs only when the twist parameter is in a range specified by the density contrast.