Coronal Loop Heating by Nearly Incompressible Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence*

How is the solar corona heated? Physical models that address the question of heating of the solar corona fall into essentially two classes: Wave/turbulence-driven models and reconnection/loop-opening models. The transport of waves and turbulence beyond the photosphere is central to the coronal heating problem. In 2018, a new model that describes the transport and evolution of turbulence in the quiet solar corona was proposed and applied to a simple 1D model of the corona. This model utilizes the nearly incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (NI MHD) turbulence transport equations to describe the transport of low-frequency turbulence in open magnetic field regions. It describes the evolution of the coupled majority quasi-2D and minority slab component, driven by the magnetic carpet and advected by a subsonic, sub-Alfvenic flow from the lower corona. In this work, we couple the NI MHD turbulence transport model with an MHD model of solar corona to study the heating problem in a coronal loop. We find that a loop whose initial magnetic field topology consists of a uniform and strong axial guide field without any transverse small scale fields and braiding can be heated to ~1 million K by transport of Alfven wave turbulence described by the NI MHD turbulence transport model.