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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Stellar and Solar Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1536035
Multi-scale Energy Release Events in the Quiet Sun: A Possible Source for Coronal Heating
Provisionally accepted- 1 National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China
- 2 National Satellite Meteorological Center (NSMC), Beijing, China
The coronal heating problem remains one of the most challenging questions in solar physics.The energy driving coronal heating is widely understood to be associated with convective motions below the photosphere. Recent high-resolution observations reveal that photospheric magnetic fields in the quiet Sun undergo complex and rapid evolution. These photospheric dynamics are expected to be reflected in the coronal magnetic field. Motivated by these insights, our research aims to explore the relationship between magnetic energy and coronal heating. By combining observations from Solar Orbiter and SDO with a magnetic field extrapolation technique, we estimate the magnetic free energy of multi-scale energy release events in the quiet Sun. Interestingly, our results reveal a strong correlation between the evolution of free energy and the integrated intensity of extreme ultraviolet emission at 171 Å in these events. We quantitatively assess the potential energy flux budget of these events to evaluate their contribution to coronal heating. Our study implies a link between photospheric magnetic field evolution and coronal temperature variations, paving the way for further research into similar phenomena.
Keywords: Quiet solar corona (1992), Solar coronal heating (1989), Solar coronal transients (312), Solar extreme ultraviolet emission (1493), Solar magnetic reconnection (1504)
Received: 28 Nov 2024; Accepted: 25 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Jiao and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Rui Wang, National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China
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