Thermal properties of cooling multi-stranded coronal loops

Abstract:

Solar coronal loops are subject to different thermal processes such as heating, cooling, plasma condensation or plasma evaporation. Based on a multi-stranded model of coronal loops satisfying the one-dimensional hydrodynamics equations, we study the cooling of coronal loops from a steady state. We perform the analysis of the cooling phases by comparing the evolution of the loops in different SDO/AIA EUV channels. The appearance and timing of the cooling in a SDO/AIA channel depend on the initial thermodynamics parameters of the loop: hotter is the loop, faster the loop will cool. Therefore, based the temperature response function of individual filters, we deduce the temperature of the steady-state loop from the ordering of the observed light curves. The time evolution of the temperature during the cooling phase can also be approximated from the light curves. This method providing a temperature diagnostic of coronal loops is successfully applied to published data of flaring loops.