Impact of nanoflare heating in the lower solar atmosphere

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms responsible for heating the solar atmosphere from a few thousand Kelvin in the photosphere to millions of degrees in the corona is a major challenge in solar physics. A number of potential heating mechanisms are continuously studied, and one of the leading candidates is called the nanoflare theory. Nanoflares are small-scale heating events associated with magnetic reconnection, and the heating mechanism is based on the theory that nanoflares occur frequently throughout the solar atmosphere and heat the corona consistently. However, proving this theory has been difficult because the energy released from nanoflares is below the detection threshold of current instrumentation and nanoflares have therefore not been observed yet. So how can we study a phenomenon that is not observable? In this work we utilize numerical simulations in order to investigate the presence and properties of nanoflares in the solar atmosphere. By analysing the atmospheric response to nanoflare heating, it is possible to probe potential heating signatures in simulations to get an idea of what to look for in observations. In our exploration of the nanoflare theory, we have investigated the diagnostic potential of nanoflares by analysing heating signatures in the lower atmosphere and compared our numerical results to an observation of a small-scale coronal heating event.