The temperature-density structure of coronal loops in hydrostatic equilibrium

Abstract

The temperature and density structure are computed for a comprehensive set of coronal loops that are in hydrostatic and thermal equilibrium. The effect of gravity is to produce significant deviations from the usual uniform-pressure scaling law (T∼(pL) ^1/3) when the loops are taller than a scale height. For thermally isolated loops it lowers the pressure throughout the loop, which in turn lowers the density significantly and also the temperature slightly; this modifies the above scaling law considerably. For more general loops, where the base conductive flux does not vanish, gravity lowers the summit pressure and so makes the radiation decrease by more than the heating. This in turn raises the temperature above its uniform pressure value for loops of moderate length but lowers it for longer loops. A divergence in loop cross-section increases the summit temperature by typically a factor of 2, and decreases the density, while an increase in loop height (for constant loop length) changes the temperature very little but can halve the density.

One feature of the results is a lack of equilibrium when the loop pressure becomes too large. This may explain the presence of cool cores in loops which originally had temperatures below 2 × 10⁶ K. Loops hotter than 2 × 10⁶ K are not expected to develop cool cores because the pressure necessary to produce non-equilibrium is larger than observed.