An Impulsive Heating Model for the Evolution of Coronal Loops

It was suggested by Parker that the solar corona is heated by many small energy release events generally called microflares or nanoflares. More and more observations showed flows and intensity variations in nonflaring loops. Both theories and observations have indicated that the heating of coronal loops should actually be unsteady. Using SOLFTM (Solar Flux Tube Model), we investigate the hydrodynamics of coronal loops undergoing different manners of impulsive heating with the same total energy deposition. The half length of the loops is 110 Mm, a typical length of active region loops. We divide the loops into two categories: loops that experience catastrophic cooling and loops that do not. It is found that when the nanoflare heating sources are in the coronal part, the loops are in non-catastrophic-cooling state and their evolutions are similar. When the heating is localized below the transition region, the loops evolve in quite different ways. It is shown that with increasing number of heating pulses and inter-pulse time, the catastrophic cooling is weakened, delayed, or even disappears altogether.