Modeling of Condensations in Coronal Loops Produced by Impulsive Heating with Variable Frequencies and Locations

Abstract

We present the results of models of impulsively heated coronal loops using the 1D hydrodynamic Adaptively Refined Godunov Solver code. The impulsive heating events (which we refer to as nanoflares ) are modeled by discrete pulses of energy along the loop. We explore the occurrence of cold condensations due to the effective equivalent of thermal nonequilibrium in loops with steady heating, and examine its dependence on nanoflare timing and intensity and also nanoflare location along the loop, including randomized distributions of nanoflares. We find that randomizing the distribution of nanoflares, both in time/intensity and location, diminishes the likelihood of condensation occurring as compared to distributions with regularly occurring nanoflares with the same average properties. The usual criteria that condensation is favored for heating near loop footpoints and with high cadences are more strict for randomized (as opposed to regular) nanoflare distributions, and for randomized distributions the condensations stay in the loop for a shorter amount of time. That said, condensation can sometimes occur in cases where the average values of parameters (frequency or location) are beyond the critical limits above which condensation does not occur for corresponding steady, non-randomized values of those parameters. These properties of condensation occurring due to randomized heating can be used in the future to investigate the diagnostics of coronal heating mechanisms.

Keywords

• Solar physics
• Solar corona
• Solar coronal heating
• Solar coronal loops