Coronal Heating Rate in the Slow Solar Wind

0576566 - ASÚ 2024 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Telloni, D. - Romoli, M. - Velli, M. - Heinzel, Petr … Total 62 authors
Coronal Heating Rate in the Slow Solar Wind.
Astrophysical Journal Letters. Roč. 955, č. 1 (2023), č. článku L4. ISSN 2041-8205. E-ISSN 2041-8213
Institutional support: RVO:67985815
Keywords : magnetohydrodynamics * interplanetary turbulence * solar corona
OECD category: Astronomy (including astrophysics,space science)
Impact factor: 7.9, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Open access

This Letter reports the first observational estimate of the heating rate in the slowly expanding solar corona. The analysis exploits the simultaneous remote and local observations of the same coronal plasma volume, with the Solar Orbiter/Metis and the Parker Solar Probe instruments, respectively, and relies on the basic solar wind magnetohydrodynamic equations. As expected, energy losses are a minor fraction of the solar wind energy flux, since most of the energy dissipation that feeds the heating and acceleration of the coronal flow occurs much closer to the Sun than the heights probed in the present study, which range from 6.3 to 13.3 R & ODOT. The energy deposited to the supersonic wind is then used to explain the observed slight residual wind acceleration and to maintain the plasma in a nonadiabatic state. As derived in the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin limit, the present energy transfer rate estimates provide a lower limit, which can be very useful in refining the turbulence-based modeling of coronal heating and subsequent solar wind acceleration.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0347336