[en] Fine-scale braiding of coronal magnetic loops by continuous footpoint motions may power coronal heating via nanoflares, which are spontaneous fine-scale bursts of internal reconnection. An initial nanoflare may trigger an avalanche of reconnection of the braids, making a microflare or larger subflare. In contrast to this internal triggering of subflares, we observe external triggering of subflares in a braided coronal magnetic field observed by the High-resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C). We track the development of these subflares using 12 s cadence images acquired by SDO/AIA in 1600, 193, 94 Å, and registered magnetograms of SDO/HMI, over four hours centered on the Hi-C observing time. These data show numerous recurring small-scale brightenings in transition-region emission happening on polarity inversion lines where flux cancellation is occurring. We present in detail an example of an apparent burst of reconnection of two loops in the transition region under the braided coronal field which is appropriate for releasing a short reconnected loop downward and a longer reconnected loop upward. The short loop presumably submerges into the photosphere, participating in observed flux cancellation. A subflare in the overlying braided magnetic field is apparently triggered by the disturbance of the braided field by the reconnection-released upward loop. At least 10 subflares observed in this braided structure appear to be triggered this way. How common this external trigger mechanism for coronal subflares is in other active regions, and how important it is for coronal heating in general, remain to be seen

[en] The timescale for energy release is an important parameter for constraining the coronal heating mechanism. Observations of 'warm' coronal loops (∼1 MK) have indicated that the heating is impulsive and that coronal plasma is far from equilibrium. In contrast, observations at higher temperatures (∼3 MK) have generally been consistent with steady heating models. Previous observations, however, have not been able to exclude the possibility that the high temperature loops are actually composed of many small-scale threads that are in various stages of heating and cooling and only appear to be in equilibrium. With new observations from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer and X-ray Telescope (XRT) on Hinode we have the ability to investigate the properties of high temperature coronal plasma in extraordinary detail. We examine the emission in the core of an active region and find three independent lines of evidence for steady heating. We find that the emission observed in XRT is generally steady for hours, with a fluctuation level of approximately 15% in an individual pixel. Short-lived impulsive heating events are observed, but they appear to be unrelated to the steady emission that dominates the active region. Furthermore, we find no evidence for warm emission that is spatially correlated with the hot emission, as would be expected if the high temperature loops are the result of impulsive heating. Finally, we also find that intensities in the 'moss', the footpoints of high temperature loops, are consistent with steady heating models provided that we account for the local expansion of the loop from the base of the transition region to the corona. In combination, these results provide strong evidence that the heating in the core of an active region is effectively steady, that is, the time between heating events is short relative to the relevant radiative and conductive cooling times.

[en] All theories that attempt to explain the heating of the high-temperature plasma observed in the solar corona are based on short bursts of energy. The intensities and velocities measured in the cores of quiescent active regions, however, can be steady over many hours of observation. One heating scenario that has been proposed to reconcile such observations with impulsive heating models is the 'long nanoflare storm', where short-duration heating events occur infrequently on many sub-resolution strands; the emission of the strands is then averaged together to explain the observed steady structures. In this Letter, we examine the emission measure distribution predicted for such a long nanoflare storm by modeling an arcade of strands in an active region core. Comparisons of the computed emission measure distributions with recent observations indicate that the long nanoflare storm scenario implies greater than five times more 1 MK emission than is actually observed for all plausible combinations of loop lengths, heating rates, and abundances. We conjecture that if the plasma had 'super coronal' abundances, the model may be able to match the observations at low temperatures.

[en] We report observations of bright dots (BDs) in a sunspot penumbra using High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) data in 193 Å and examine their sizes, lifetimes, speeds, and intensities. The sizes of the BDs are on the order of 1″ and are therefore hard to identify in the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) 193 Å images, which have a 1.″2 spatial resolution, but become readily apparent with Hi-C's spatial resolution, which is five times better. We supplement Hi-C data with data from AIA's 193 Å passband to see the complete lifetime of the BDs that appeared before and/or lasted longer than Hi-C's three-minute observation period. Most Hi-C BDs show clear lateral movement along penumbral striations, either toward or away from the sunspot umbra. Single BDs often interact with other BDs, combining to fade away or brighten. The BDs that do not interact with other BDs tend to have smaller displacements. These BDs are about as numerous but move slower on average than Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) BDs, which was recently reported by Tian et al., and the sizes and lifetimes are on the higher end of the distribution of IRIS BDs. Using additional AIA passbands, we compare the light curves of the BDs to test whether the Hi-C BDs have transition region (TR) temperatures like those of the IRIS BDs. The light curves of most Hi-C BDs peak together in different AIA channels, indicating that their temperatures are likely in the range of the cooler TR (1−4 × 10⁵ K).

[en] We describe the characteristics and evolution of the magnetic field and chromospheric emission in an active region core observed by the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on Hinode. Consistent with previous studies, we find that the moss is unipolar, the spatial distribution of magnetic flux evolves slowly, and that the magnetic field is only moderately inclined. We also show that the field-line inclination and horizontal component are coherent, and that the magnetic field is mostly sheared in the inter-moss regions where the highest magnetic flux variability is seen. Using extrapolations from spectropolarimeter magnetograms, we show that the magnetic connectivity in the moss is different from that in the quiet Sun because most of the magnetic field extends to significant coronal heights. The magnetic flux, field vector, and chromospheric emission in the moss also appear highly dynamic but actually show only small-scale variations in magnitude on timescales longer than the cooling times for hydrodynamic loops computed from our extrapolations, suggesting high-frequency (continuous) heating events. Some evidence is found for flux (Ca II intensity) changes on the order of 100-200 G (DN) on timescales of 20-30 minutes that could be taken as indicative of low-frequency heating. We find, however, that only a small fraction (10%) of our simulated loops would be expected to cool on these timescales, and we do not find clear evidence that the flux changes consistently produce intensity changes in the chromosphere. Using observations from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), we also determine that the filling factor in the moss is ∼16%, consistent with previous studies and larger than the size of an SOT pixel. The magnetic flux and chromospheric intensity in most individual SOT pixels in the moss vary by less than ∼20% and ∼10%, respectively, on loop cooling timescales. In view of the high energy requirements of the chromosphere, we suggest that these variations could be sufficient for the heating of 'warm' EUV loops, but that the high basal levels may be more important for powering the hot core loops rooted in the moss. The magnetic field and chromospheric emission appear to evolve gradually on spatial scales comparable to the cross-field scale of the fundamental coronal structures inferred from EIS measurements.

[en] Penumbral microjets (PJs) are transient narrow bright features in the chromosphere of sunspot penumbrae, first characterized by Katsukawa et al. using the Ca ii H-line filter on Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope (SOT). It was proposed that the PJs form as a result of reconnection between two magnetic components of penumbrae (spines and interspines), and that they could contribute to the transition region (TR) and coronal heating above sunspot penumbrae. We propose a modified picture of formation of PJs based on recent results on the internal structure of sunspot penumbral filaments. Using data of a sunspot from Hinode/SOT, High Resolution Coronal Imager, and different passbands of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we examine whether PJs have signatures in the TR and corona. We find hardly any discernible signature of normal PJs in any AIA passbands, except for a few of them showing up in the 1600 Å images. However, we discovered exceptionally stronger jets with similar lifetimes but bigger sizes (up to 600 km wide) occurring repeatedly in a few locations in the penumbra, where evidence of patches of opposite-polarity fields in the tails of some penumbral filaments is seen in Stokes-V images. These tail PJs do display signatures in the TR. Whether they have any coronal-temperature plasma is unclear. We infer that none of the PJs, including the tail PJs, directly heat the corona in active regions significantly, but any penumbral jet might drive some coronal heating indirectly via the generation of Alfvén waves and/or braiding of the coronal field

[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] The recent analysis of observations taken with the EUV Imaging Spectrometer and X-Ray Telescope instruments on Hinode suggests that well-constrained measurements of the temperature distribution in solar active regions can finally be made. Such measurements are critical for constraining theories of coronal heating. Past analysis, however, has suffered from limited sample sizes and large uncertainties at temperatures between 5 and 10 MK. Here we present a systematic study of the differential emission measure distribution in 15 active region cores. We focus on measurements in the 'inter-moss' region, that is, the region between the loop footpoints, where the observations are easier to interpret. To reduce the uncertainties at the highest temperatures we present a new method for isolating the Fe XVIII emission in the AIA/SDO 94 Å channel. The resulting differential emission measure distributions confirm our previous analysis showing that the temperature distribution in an active region core is often strongly peaked near 4 MK. We characterize the properties of the emission distribution as a function of the total unsigned magnetic flux. We find that the amount of high-temperature emission in the active region core is correlated with the total unsigned magnetic flux, while the emission at lower temperatures, in contrast, is inversely related. These results provide compelling evidence that high-temperature active region emission is often close to equilibrium, although weaker active regions may be dominated by evolving million degree loops in the core.

[en] We examine 172 Å ultra-high-resolution images of a solar plage region from the High-Resolution Coronal Imager, version 2.1 (Hi–C 2.1, or Hi–C) rocket flight of 2018 May 29. Over its five minute flight, Hi–C resolved a plethora of small-scale dynamic features that appear near noise level in concurrent Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) 171 Å images. For 10 selected events, comparisons with AIA images at other wavelengths and with Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) images indicate that these features are cool (compared to the corona) ejections. Combining Hi–C 172 Å, AIA 171 Å, IRIS 1400 Å, and Hα, we see that these 10 cool ejections are similar to the Hα “dynamic fibrils” and Ca ii “anemone jets” found in earlier studies. The front of some of our cool ejections are likely heated, showing emission in IRIS 1400 Å. On average, these cool ejections have approximate widths 3.″2 ± 2.″1, (projected) maximum heights and velocities 4.″3 ± 2.″5 and 23 ± 6 km s⁻¹, and lifetimes 6.5 ± 2.4 min. We consider whether these Hi–C features might result from eruptions of sub-minifilaments (smaller than the minifilaments that erupt to produce coronal jets). Comparisons with SDO’s Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) magnetograms do not show magnetic mixed-polarity neutral lines at these events’ bases, as would be expected for true scaled-down versions of solar filaments/minifilaments. But the features’ bases are all close to single-polarity strong-flux-edge locations, suggesting possible local opposite-polarity flux unresolved by HMI. Or it may be that our Hi–C ejections instead operate via the shock-wave mechanism that is suggested to drive dynamic fibrils and the so-called type I spicules.

[en] How magnetic energy is injected and released in the solar corona, keeping it heated to several million degrees, remains elusive. Coronal heating generally increases with increasing magnetic field strength. From a comparison of a nonlinear force-free model of the three-dimensional active region coronal field to observed extreme-ultraviolet loops, we find that (1) umbra-to-umbra coronal loops, despite being rooted in the strongest magnetic flux, are invisible, and (2) the brightest loops have one foot in an umbra or penumbra and the other foot in another sunspot’s penumbra or in unipolar or mixed-polarity plage. The invisibility of umbra-to-umbra loops is new evidence that magnetoconvection drives solar-stellar coronal heating: evidently, the strong umbral field at both ends quenches the magnetoconvection and hence the heating. Broadly, our results indicate that depending on the field strength in both feet, the photospheric feet of a coronal loop on any convective star can either engender or quench coronal heating in the loop’s body.