Intermittent heating of the corona as an alternative to generate fast solar wind flows

We discuss a new alternative to the generation of fast streams which does not require momentum addition beyond the critical point. We consider the consequences on the solar wind of temporally intermittent heat depositions at the base of the wind. With the help of Id hydrodynamic simulations we show that the instantaneous wind velocity profile fluctuates around an average profile well above the one corresponding to the Parker solution with a coronal temperature equal to the average coronal temperature imposed at the bottom of the numerical domain. The origin of this result lies in a previously overlooked phenomenon, the overexpansion of hot plasma regions in the subsonic wind.