ON THE GENERATION OF NONLINEAR MAGNETIC TUBE WAVES IN THE SOLAR ATMOSPHERE

The nonlinear time-dependent response to purely transverse shaking of a thin vertical magnetic flux tube embedded in the solar atmosphere is investigated numerically. The shaking is imposed on the tube at different heights in the solar atmosphere and the resulting magnetic wave energy fluxes are calculated for the observationally established range of velocity amplitudes and tube magnetic fields. The obtained results clearly demonstrate that typical wave energy fluxes carried by nonlinear transverse tube waves are of the order of 10(9) erg/cm(2)s. This, in contrast to previous analytical studies, seems to indicate that there is enough wave energy to account for the enhanced heating observed in the chromospheric network, and that magnetic tube waves may also play some role in the heating of other regions of the solar atmosphere.