Self-consistent nanoflare heating in model active regions: MHD avalanches in curved coronal arcades

MHD avalanches involve small, narrowly localized instabilities spreading across neighbouring areas in a magnetic field. Cumulatively, many small events release vast amounts of stored energy. Straight cylindrical flux tubes are easily modelled, between two parallel planes, and can support such an avalanche: one unstable flux tube causes instability to proliferate, via magnetic reconnection, and then an ongoing chain of like events. True coronal loops, however, are visibly curved, between footpoints on the same solar surface. With 3D MHD simulations, we verify the viability of MHD avalanches in the more physically realistic, curved geometry of a coronal arcade. MHD avalanches thus amplify instability across strong solar magnetic fields and disturb wide regions of plasma. Contrasting with the behaviour of straight cylindrical models, a modified ideal MHD kink mode occurs, more readily and preferentially upwards in the new, curved geometry. Instability spreads over a region far wider than the original flux tubes and than their footpoints. Consequently, sustained heating is produced in a series of ‘nanoflares’ collectively contributing substantially to coronal heating. Overwhelmingly, viscous heating dominates, generated in shocks and jets produced by individual small events. Reconnection is not the greatest contributor to heating, but is rather the facilitator of those processes that are. Localized and impulsive, heating shows no strong spatial preference, except a modest bias away from footpoints, towards the loop’s apex. Remarkable evidence emerges of ‘campfire’ like events, with simultaneous, reconnection-induced nanoflares at separate sites along coronal strands, akin to recent results from Solar Orbiter. Effects of physically realistic plasma parameters, and the implications for thermodynamic models, with energetic transport, are discussed.