Nonlinear wave heating of solar coronal loops

The heating of magnetically closed structures (loops) in the solar corona by the resonant absorption of incident waves is studied by means of numerical simulations in the framework of nonlinear resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). It is shown that the dynamics in the resonant layer is indeed very nonlinear for typical coronal parameters. The effect of the nonlinearity on the efficiency of the resonant heating mechanism is investigated. It turns out that this heating mechanism may be less efficient than concluded from the linear MHD studies. As a matter of fact, the modification of the background magnetic field results in a shift of the resonance positions in time which in turn yields broader dissipation layers.