Looking for the Heating Function of Solar Coronal Loops

Advisor: Piet Martens

The building blocks of X-ray and EUV emission in the solar corona are so-called coronal loops. These loops, it is believed, follow the magnetic field lines and they are brighter than the surrounding corona because coronal heating -- the conversion of free magnetic to thermal energy -- is concentrated inside them. Solar coronal loops are now being observed with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution by the AIA instrument on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Recent theoretical advances have shown that the plasma pressure and temperature structure of coronal loops depend on the heating mechanism in a precise way. A complicating factor though in trying to reconstruct the heating mechanism from theory is that every observed loop consists of a bundle of individual strands -- like strands of a rope -- that may be heated independently. Therefore matching the observed temperature and brightness along a loop with theoretical results requires a subtle modeling effort -- but it is possible.

The student will isolate a set of clearly defined AIA loops, measure their temperature and brightness profiles, and match these with combinations of theoretical predictions for bundles of strands. This work combines data analysis with simple numerical modeling. The expected outcome is the identification of a single or a few proposed theoretical heating mechanisms that match the data, while all other proposed heating mechanisms can be rejected.