Stability of cool flux tubes in the solar chromosphere. II - Non-linear dynamical behaviour

Abstract

A single vertical cool flux tube in the solar chromosphere is focused upon for stability studies. The analysis of a previous study by Hasan and Kneer (1986) is extended to the nonlinear regime with a view to examining the consequences of having self-exciting mechanisms of oscillations above the photosphere. In particular, the possibility of whether the motions driven by the convective instability caused by the presence of CO could extract sufficient energy from the radiation field near the Tmin region of empirical models and deposit it in higher layers to produce chromospheric heating is investigated. The time evolution of this instability is followed by solving the MHD equations in the thin flux tube approximation. The analysis includes energy exchange with the radiation field. The simulations of a flux tube with a transmitting upper boundary show that the average energy flux in the oscillations is inadequate for chromospheric heating.