Energy in waves

4.3 Energy in waves

The process of magnetic energy release reconnects two magnetic field lines and launches two reconnection jets that can be viewed as Alfvénic excursions of two waves. The waves cascade to smaller wavelengths until they resonate with electrons or ion (Miller et al., 1997

; Petrosian et al., 2006

). Thus waves are essential in the currently most popular view of particle acceleration. Reconnection may be collision-free as found in the terrestrial magnetosphere (Øieroset et al., 2001

) and possibly involve effects of electron inertia. For solar conditions, intense turbulence of collision-free waves causing anomalous resistivity may play a role.

Waves of all frequencies from large scale MHD waves to high-frequency waves up to whistler waves have been predicted and observed in magnetospheric reconnection (Deng and Matsumoto, 2001 ; Øieroset et al., 2001 ). Waves can propagate energy across magnetic field lines. Low-frequency Alfvén waves produced by coronal reconnection can move through most of the corona having absorption at inhomogeneities. Thus they can transport energy even to the high corona and solar wind.

MHD waves related to flares have been inferred from pulsating radio bursts (Roberts et al., 1983 ) and were more recently reported in high-temperature EUV emission (Aschwanden et al., 1999 ) and in X-rays (Foullon et al., 2005 ; Nakariakov et al., 2006 ). Schrijver et al. (2002 ) have shown that most larger flares (classes M and X) trigger loop oscillations. However, the energy deposited in these oscillations is typically six orders of magnitude smaller compared to the flare energy release (Terradas et al., 2007 ). Furthermore, the oscillations are observed to damp within a few oscillation periods. From the existing observations it is not clear how far the energy of these oscillations propagates into the corona. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the observed oscillations do not significantly contribute to coronal heating.

Current acceleration models are based on wave damping (Section 6). The energy in observed MHD waves originating from flares is in striking contrast to expectation from the assumed role they play in acceleration.