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dc.contributor.authorProkopyszyn, Alexander Philip Kofi
dc.contributor.authorHood, Alan William
dc.date.accessioned2019-10-22T09:30:02Z
dc.date.available2019-10-22T09:30:02Z
dc.date.issued2019-12
dc.identifier262153097
dc.identifier3aa9abe0-7e05-4fe6-8c78-460e58567172
dc.identifier000501831600001
dc.identifier85083624909
dc.identifier.citationProkopyszyn , A P K & Hood , A W 2019 , ' Investigating the damping rate of phase-mixed Alfvén waves ' , Astronomy & Astrophysics , vol. 632 , A93 . https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201936658en
dc.identifier.issn0004-6361
dc.identifier.otherBibCode: 2019A&A...632A..93P
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0003-2620-2068/work/66398293
dc.identifier.otherBibCode: 2019A&A...632A..93P
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/18735
dc.descriptionFunding: UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (U.K.) through the consolidated grant ST/N000609/1.en
dc.description.abstractContext. This paper investigates the effectiveness of phase mixing as a coronal heating mechanism. A key quantity is the wave damping rate, γ, defined as the ratio of the heating rate to the wave energy. Aims. This paper is primarily concerned with answering the question: Can laminar phase-mixed Alfvén waves have a large enough value of γ to heat the corona? Other questions this paper aims to answer are: How well can the γ of standing Alfvén waves which have reached steady-state be approximated with a relatively simple equation, namely, equation (3.5)? Why does leakage of waves out of a loop reduce γ and by how much? How does increasing the number of excited harmonics affect γ? Methods. We calculate an upper bound for γ and compare this with the γ required to heat the corona. Analytic results are verified numerically. Results. We find that γ is too small at observed frequencies by approximately 3 orders of magnitude to heat the corona. Therefore, we believe that laminar phase mixing is not a viable standalone heating mechanism for coronal loops. To arrive at this conclusion, several assumptions were made. The assumptions are discussed in Section 2.1. A key assumption is that we model the waves as strictly laminar. We show that γ is largest at resonance. Equation (3.5) provides a good estimate for the damping rate (within approximately 10% accuracy) for resonant field lines. However, away from resonance, the equation provides a poor estimate, with it predicting γ to be orders of magnitude too large. We find that leakage acts to reduce γ but plays a negligible role if γ is of the order required to heat the corona. If the wave energy follows a power spectrum with slope -5/3 then γ grows logarithmically with the number of excited harmonics. If the number of excited harmonics is increased by much more than 100, then the heating is mainly caused by gradients parallel to the field rather than perpendicular. Therefore, in this case, the system is not heated mainly by phase mixing.
dc.format.extent12
dc.format.extent2554979
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofAstronomy & Astrophysicsen
dc.subjectSun: coronaen
dc.subjectSun: magnetic fielden
dc.subjectMagnetohydrodynamics (MHD)en
dc.subjectSun: oscillationsen
dc.subjectWavesen
dc.subjectQB Astronomyen
dc.subjectQC Physicsen
dc.subjectT-NDASen
dc.subject.lccQBen
dc.subject.lccQCen
dc.titleInvestigating the damping rate of phase-mixed Alfvén wavesen
dc.typeJournal articleen
dc.contributor.sponsorScience & Technology Facilities Councilen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Applied Mathematicsen
dc.identifier.doi10.1051/0004-6361/201936658
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.identifier.urlhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019A%26A...632A..93Pen
dc.identifier.grantnumberST/N000609/1en


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