Diagnostics of Solar Corona Heating Parameters Using the Observed Gravitational Stratification of the Medium

Abstract

The problem of coronal heating is one of the fundamental problems of solar physics. At present, it is again attracting great interest due to the appearance of a large amount of observational data of high spatial and temporal resolution. These data made it possible to diagnose plasma parameters from observations of waves and oscillations in coronal magnetic structures and, moreover, to introduce analytical constraints on the coronal heating function. In this paper, we propose an approach allowing us to impose constraints on the heating function based on data on the gravitational stratification of the solar atmosphere. The developed algorithm is applied to the altitude profiles of temperature and density in several regions of the solar corona obtained from direct modeling of EUV radiation from the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA). Assuming that the heating function is a power function of temperature and density, we determine the domain of power-index constraints allowing us to realize the observed altitude profiles. The obtained results are combined with the conditions of stability for the entropy and magnetoacoustic modes, to narrow the region of possible parameters further.