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Heating The Solar Corona By Magnetic Reconnection

  • Conference paper
Plasma Astrophysics And Space Physics

Abstract

Here I review briefly the theory of magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and ask what observational evidence is there that it is heating the corona. In particular, the new directions in which three-dimensional theory for reconnection is heading are outlined. Part of the coronal heating problem has been solved with the identification of reconnection driven by converging flux motions as the key for x-ray bright points. Furthermore, it has been shown that the large-scale diffuse corona is heated rather uniformly, so that turbulent reconnection by braiding or ion-cyclotron waves driven by network micro-flares are prime candidates. Finally, reconnection is the natural explanation for a wide variety of phenomena discovered by SOHO including explosive events, blinkers, the magnetic carpet and even possibly tornadoes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mathematical and Computational Sciences Dept, St Andrews University, St Andrews, KY, 16 9SS, UK

    E. R. Priest

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  1. E. R. Priest
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute für Aeronomie, Lindau, Germany

    Jörg Büchner , Ian Axford , Eckart Marsch  & Vytenis Vasyliūnas , ,  & 

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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Priest, E.R. (1999). Heating The Solar Corona By Magnetic Reconnection. In: Büchner, J., Axford, I., Marsch, E., Vasyliūnas, V. (eds) Plasma Astrophysics And Space Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4203-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4203-8_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5828-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4203-8

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