A cellular automaton nanoflare model of coronal loops

M. C. LÓPEZ FUENTES; J. A. KLIMCHUK

Bremen, Alemania

Congreso; 38th COSPAR Scientific Assembly; 2010

Committee on Space Research (COSPAR)

In Lopez-Fuentes, Klimchuk and Mandrini (2007) we found that the evolution of soft X-ray loops can be separated into three main phases that suggest the development, maintainance, and decay of a self-organized system. Here, we present a cellular automaton model that reproduces the main features of the observed evolution. The model is based on the idea that loops are made of multiple unresolved strands which have footpoints that are displaced by random photospheric motions (Parker 1988). In this scenario, there is a continuous increase of the magnetic stress between neighboring strands until a critical stress is reached and the accumulated energy is suddenly released by reconnection. Each of these reconnection "events" is associated with a nanoflare. Using the EBTEL hydrodynamic code (Klimchuk, Patsourakos and Cargill 2008) to model the plasma response we construct synthetic light curves that we compare with the observations. We also study how the properties of the light curves scale with the different parameters of the model. Finally, we discuss how the present model can be used to explain loop observations in different wavelengths.