Temporal evolution of resonant absorption in solar coronal loops

A numerical code is presented for the computation of the temporal evolution of an externally driven cylindrical plasma column in the framework of linearized compressible and resistive magnetohydrodynamics. The partial differential equations are solved with a semi-discretization method using cubic and quadratic finite elements for the spatial discretization and a fully implicit time advance. This numerical technique yields very accurate results even for small values of the resistivity. With this code it is, amongst others, possible to simulate the heating of solar coronal loops by the resonant absorption of waves that inpitch on them in order to determine the role of this dissipation mechanism in coronal heating. In particular, it is necessary to find out how the time scales of this heating mechanism compare to the life of the coronal loops. © 1990.status: publishe