Alfven waves in the structured solar corona

A simple model of a periodic ensemble of closely packed flux tubes, sitting atop a vertically stratified layer, reveals that an incident fast wave from below preferentially converts almost immediately to Alfven waves in the flux tubes, with kink waves restricted to at most a very few Fourier modes. This suggests that observations of coronal kink modes in such structured systems may greatly underestimate the netwave-energy flux being transported into and through the corona, much of which may reside in harder-to-observe Alfven waves. The processes of mode conversion/resonant absorption and Alfven phase mixing are implicated. It is suggested that the Sun's internal p-mode field - the 5-min oscillations - may contribute substantially to the process by supplying incident fast waves in the chromosphere that scatter and mode-convert in the tube ensemble.