Mixed properties of slow magnetoacoustic and entropy waves in a plasma with heating/cooling misbalance

TL;DR

This paper derives an exact analytical solution describing the mixed behavior of slow magnetoacoustic and entropy waves in a thermodynamically active plasma with heating and cooling effects, revealing regimes with non-propagating disturbances and energy partitioning.

Contribution

It provides a novel exact analytical solution for slow MA and entropy wave evolution in heated and cooled plasmas, highlighting different regimes and observational implications.

Findings

Slow MA modes can be non-propagating harmonics.

Perturbations appear as non-propagating density and temperature disturbances.

Energy partition depends on heating/cooling properties.

Abstract

The processes of the coronal plasma heating and cooling were previously shown to significantly affect the dynamics of slow magnetoacoustic (MA) waves, causing amplification or attenuation, and also dispersion. However, the entropy mode is also excited in such a thermodynamically active plasma and is affected by the heating/cooling misbalance too. This mode is usually associated with the phenomenon of coronal rain and formation of prominences. Unlike the adiabatic plasmas, the properties and evolution of slow MA and entropy waves in continuously heated and cooling plasmas get mixed. Different regimes of the misbalance lead to a variety of scenarios for the initial perturbation to evolve. In order to describe properties and evolution of slow MA and entropy waves in various regimes of the misbalance, we obtained an exact analytical solution of the linear evolutionary equation. Using the characteristic timescales and the obtained exact solution, we identified regimes with qualitatively different behaviour of slow MA and entropy modes. For some of those regimes, the spatio-temporal evolution of the initial Gaussian pulse is shown. In particular, it is shown that slow MA modes may have a range of non-propagating harmonics. In this regime, perturbations caused by slow MA and entropy modes in a low-$\beta$ plasma would look identically in observations, as non-propagating disturbances of the plasma density (and temperature) either growing or decaying with time. We also showed that the partition of the initial energy between slow MA and entropy modes depends on the properties of the heating and cooling processes involved. The obtained exact analytical solution could be further applied to the interpretation of observations and results of numerical modelling of slow MA waves in the corona and the formation and evolution of coronal rain.