[en] Previously, the collisional merging formation of FRCs has been developed to generate high performance FRCs. A drastic increase in the excluded flux and total temperature were observed in the FRCs generated with this technique; furthermore, these phenomena strongly depend on the translation velocity of individual plasmoids. However, the dependence of the merged-FRC performance on the translation velocity has not been studied in detail. To study the dependence, the effect of installed auxiliary coils on the formation region on the translation velocity of FRCs in the FAT-CM device has been evaluated by the simulation with a two-dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamics code, which is called Lamy Ridge. The control of translation velocity by using the auxiliary coils has been was demonstrated on the order of several tens of km/s in the simulation. The trapped poloidal flux and the total temperature of simulated FRCs have increased depending on the translation velocity. (author)

[en] In the present study, we use a forward modeling method to construct a 3D thermal structure encompassing active region 7986 of 1996 August. The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emissions are then computed and compared with observations. The heating mechanism is inspired by a theory on Alfvén wave turbulence dissipation. The magnetic structure is built from a Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)/MDI magnetogram and an estimated torsion parameter deduced from observations. We found that the solution to the equations in some locations is in a thermal nonequilibrium state. The time variation of the density and temperature profiles leads to time dependent emissions, which appear as thin, loop-like structures with uniform cross-section. Their timescale is consistent with the lifetime of observed coronal loops. The dynamic nature of the solution also leads to plasma flows that resemble observed coronal rain. The computed EUV emissions from the coronal part of the fan loops and the high loops compare favorably with SOHO/EIT observations in a quantitative comparison. However, the computed emission from the lower atmosphere is excessive compared to observations, a symptom common to many models. Some factors for this discrepancy are suggested, including the use of coronal abundances to compute the emissions and the neglect of atmospheric opacity effects

[en] We systematically investigate the effects of geometrical assumptions in one-dimensional (1D) models of coronal loops. Many investigations of coronal loops have been based on restrictive assumptions, including symmetry in the loop shape and heating profile, and a uniform cross-sectional area. Starting with a solution for a symmetric uniform-area loop with uniform heating, we gradually relax these restrictive assumptions to consider the effects of nonuniform area, nonuniform heating, a nonsymmetric loop shape, and nonsymmetric heating, to show that the character of the solutions can change in important ways. We find that loops with nonuniform cross-sectional area are more likely to experience thermal nonequilibrium, and that they produce significantly enhanced coronal emission, compared with their uniform-area counterparts. We identify a process of incomplete condensation in loops experiencing thermal nonequilibrium during which the coronal parts of loops never fully cool to chromospheric temperatures. These solutions are characterized by persistent siphon flows. Their properties agree with observations (Lionello et al.) and may not suffer from the drawbacks that led Klimchuk et al. to conclude that thermal nonequilibrium is not consistent with observations. We show that our 1D results are qualitatively similar to those seen in a three-dimensional model of an active region. Our results suggest that thermal nonequilibrium may play an important role in the behavior of coronal loops, and that its dismissal by Klimchuk et al., whose model suffered from some of the restrictive assumptions we described, may have been premature

[en] Many different techniques have been used to characterize the plasma in the solar corona: density-sensitive spectral line ratios are used to infer the density, the evolution of coronal structures in different passbands is used to infer the temperature evolution, and the simultaneous intensities measured in multiple passbands are used to determine the emission measure distributions. All these analysis techniques assume that the intensity of the structures can be isolated through background subtraction. In this paper, we use simulated observations from a three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulation of a coronal active region to verify these diagnostics. The density and temperature from the simulation are used to generate images in several passbands and spectral lines. We identify loop structures in the simulated images and calculate the background. We then determine the density, temperature, and emission measure distribution as a function of time from the observations and compare these with the true temperature and density of the loop. We find that the overall characteristics of the temperature, density, and emission measure are recovered by the analysis methods, but the details are not. For instance, the emission measure curves calculated from the simulated observations are much broader than the true emission measure distribution, though the average temperature evolution is similar. These differences are due, in part, to a limitation of the analysis methods, but also to inadequate background subtraction.

[en] The location and frequency of events that heat the million-degree corona are still a matter of debate. One potential heating scenario is that the energy release is effectively steady and highly localized at the footpoints of coronal structures. Such an energy deposition drives thermal non-equilibrium solutions in the hydrodynamic equations in longer loops. This heating scenario was considered and discarded by Klimchuk et al. on the basis of their one-dimensional simulations as incapable of reproducing observational characteristics of loops. In this paper, we use three-dimensional simulations to generate synthetic emission images, from which we select and analyze six loops. The main differences between our model and that of Klimchuk et al. concern (1) dimensionality, (2) resolution, (3) geometrical properties of the loops, (4) heating function, and (5) radiative function. We find evidence, in this small set of simulated loops, that the evolution of the light curves, the variation of temperature along the loops, the density profile, and the absence of small-scale structures are compatible with the characteristics of observed loops. We conclude that quasi-steady footpoint heating that drives thermal non-equilibrium solutions cannot yet be ruled out as a viable heating scenario for EUV loops

[en] The location and frequency of coronal energy release provide a significant constraint on the coronal heating mechanism. The evolution of the intensity observed in coronal structures found from time lag analysis of Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) data has been used to argue that heating must occur sporadically. Recently, we have demonstrated that quasi-steady, highly stratified (footpoint) heating can produce results qualitatively consistent with the evolution of observed coronal structures. The goals of this paper are to demonstrate that time lag analysis of 3D simulations of footpoint heating are qualitatively consistent with time lag analysis of observations and to use the 3D simulations to further understand whether time lag analysis is a useful tool in defining the evolution of coronal structures. We find the time lag maps generated from simulated data are consistent with the observed time lag maps. We next investigate several example points. In some cases, the calculated time lag reflects the evolution of a unique loop along the line of sight, though there may be additional evolving structures along the line of sight. We confirm that using the multi-peak AIA channels can produce time lags that are difficult to interpret. We suggest using a different high temperature channel, such as an X-ray channel. Finally, we find that multiple evolving structures along the line of sight can produce time lags that do not represent the physical properties of any structure along the line of sight, although the cross-correlation coefficient of the lightcurves is high. Considering the projected geometry of the loops may reduce some of the line-of-sight confusion.