Microscale Structures on the Quiet Sun and Coronal Heating
Abstract
We present some results concerning transient brightenings on the quiet Sun, based on
data from the EIT instrument aboard SOHO. Histograms of intensity are found to be
well fitted by chi-square distributions for small values of the intensity, while at
high intensities power-law distributions are always observed. Also, the emission
presents the same statistical properties when the resolution is downgraded by local
averaging, i.e. it appears to be self-similar down to the resolution scale of the
instruments. These properties are characteristic of the emission from a forced
turbulent system whose dissipation scale is much smaller than the pixel dimension. On
the basis of the data presented as well as other published results and our present
theoretical understanding of MHD turbulence, we discuss the realism of the nanoflare
scenario of coronal heating.
Subject headings: Coronal Heating, Bright Points, Scale invariance
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