Solar coronal heating from small-scale magnetic braids by L. P. Chitta et al. on Tuesday 29 November

Relaxation of braided coronal magnetic fields through reconnection is thought

to be a source of energy to heat plasma in active region coronal loops.

However, observations of active region coronal heating associated with an

untangling of magnetic braids remain sparse. One reason for this paucity could

be the lack of coronal observations with a sufficiently high spatial and

temporal resolution to capture this process in action. Using new observations

with high spatial resolution (250-270 km on the Sun) and high cadence (3-10 s)

from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on board Solar Orbiter, we observed

the untangling of small-scale coronal braids in different active regions. The

untangling is associated with impulsive heating of the gas in these braided

loops. We assess that coronal magnetic braids overlying cooler chromospheric

filamentary structures are perhaps more common. Furthermore, our observations

show signatures of spatially coherent and intermittent coronal heating during

the relaxation of the magnetic braids. Our study reveals the operation of

gentle and impulsive modes of magnetic reconnection in the solar corona.

arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2209.12203v3