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CHAPTER 9. CORONAL HEATING

Heating Energy Requirement

We start to analyze the coronal heating problem by inquiring rst about the energy requirements. A coronal heating source EH has to balance at least the two major loss terms of radiative loss ER and thermal conduction EC , as we specied in the energy equation (3.6.2) for a hydrostatic corona, EH (x) ER (x) EC (x) = 0 , (9.1.1)

where each of the terms represents an energy rate per volume and time unit (erg cm 3 s1 ), and depends on the spatial location x. Because the corona is very inhomogeneous, the heating requirement varies by several orders of magnitude depending on the location. Because of the highly organized structuring by the magnetic eld (due to the low plasma- parameter in the corona), neighboring structures are fully isolated and can have large gradients in the heating rate requirement, while eld-aligned conduction will smooth out temperature differences so that an energy balance is warranted along magnetic eld lines. We can therefore specify the heating requirement for each magnetically isolated structure separately (e.g., a loop or an open uxtube in a coronal hole), and consider only the eld-aligned space coordinate s in each energy equation, as we did for the energy equation (3.6.2) of a single loop, EH (s) ER (s) EC (s) = 0 . (9.1.2)

Parameterizing the dependence of the heating rate on the space coordinate s with an exponential function (Eq. 3.7.2) (i.e., with a base heating rate EH 0 and heating scale length sH ), we derived scaling laws for coronal loops in hydrostatic energy balance, which are known as RTV laws for the special case of uniform heating without gravity (Eqs. 3.6.1415), and have been generalized by Serio et al. (1981) for nonuniform heating and gravity (Eqs. 3.6.1617). It is instructional to express the RTV law as a function of the loop density ne and loop half length L, which we obtain by inserting the pressure from the ideal gas law, p0 = 2ne kB Tmax , into Eqs. (3.6.1415), Tmax 103 (ne L)1/2
7/ 4 1/ 4 EH 0 2 1017 ne L

(9.1.3) (9.1.4)

This form of the RTV law tells us that the heating rate depends most strongly on the 7 /4 density, EH 0 ne , and very weakly on the loop length L. Actually, we can retrieve essentially the same scaling law using a much simpler argument, considering only radiative loss, which is essentially proportional to the squared density (Eq. 2.9.1), EH 0 ER = n2e (T ) 1022 n2 e (erg cm3 s1 ) (9.1.5)

where the radiative loss function can be approximated by a constant (T ) 1022 [erg cm3 s1 ] in the temperature range of T 0.5 3 MK that characterizes most parts of the corona. This gives us a very simple guiding rule: the coronal heating rate requirement is essentially determined by the squared density. The rule (Eq. 9.1.5) gives us the following estimates: in coronal holes the base density is typically ne 108 cm3 and the heating rate requirement is thus EH 0 106 (erg cm3 s1 ).

9.1. HEATING ENERGY REQUIREMENT

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Table 9.1: Chromospheric and coronal energy losses, in units of (erg cm2 s1 ) (Withbroe &
Noyes 1977). Parameter Coronal hole Transition layer pressure [dyn cm2 ] 7 102 Coronal temperature [K], at r 1.1R 10 6 Coronal energy losses [erg cm2 s1 ] Conductive ux FC 6 104 Radiative ux FR 104 Solar wind ux FW 7 105 Total corona loss FC + FR + FW 8 105 Chromospheric radiative losses [erg cm2 s1 ] Low chromosphere 2 106 Middle chromosphere 2 106 Upper chromosphere 3 105 Total chromospheric loss 4 106 2 1 Solar wind mass loss [g cm s ] 2 1010 Quiet Sun 2 101 1.5 106 2 105 105 < 5 104 3 105 2 106 2 106 3 105 4 106 < 2 1011 Active region 2 2.5 106 105 107 5 106 (< 105 ) 107 107 107 2 106 2 107 (< 4 1011 )

>

Since the heating ux is quickly distributed along a magnetic eld line, we can just specify a heating rate per unit area at the coronal base, by integrating the volume heating rate in the vertical direction. For hydrostatic structures, we can integrate the heating rate in the vertical direction simply by multiplying it with the density scale height T , which is proportional to the temperature (Eq. 3.1.16). We denote the heating ux per unit area with the symbol FH 0 (also called Poynting ux), FH 0 = EH 0 T 5 103 ne 108 cm
2

T 1 MK

[erg cm2 s1 ]

(9.1.6)

Thus for a coronal hole, with ne = 108 cm3 and T = 1.0 MK, we estimate a required heating ux of FH 0 = 5 103 erg cm2 s1 , and in an active region with a typical loop base density of ne = 2.0 109 cm3 and T = 2.5 MK, we estimate FH 0 5 106 (erg cm2 s1 ). Thus the heating rate requirement varies by about 3 orders of magnitude between the two places. Another conclusion we can immediately draw about the heating function is that the height dependence of the heating has roughly to follow the hydrostatic equilibrium. The heating scale height sH required in hydrostatic equilibrium is therefore half of the density scale height T , because the radiative loss scales with the squared density, EH (h) = EH 0 exp (h/sH ) ER (h) ne (h)2 [n0 exp (h/T )]2 , sH T 23 2 T 1 MK [Mm] . (9.1.7)

This simple theoretical prediction, assuming that radiative loss is the dominant loss component in the coronal part of loops, is also conrmed by hydrostatic modeling of 40 loops observed with TRACE, where including the effect of thermal conduction yielded only slightly smaller values (i.e., sH = 17 6 Mm, Aschwanden et al. 2000d).