Kink and longitudinal oscillations in the magnetic network on the Sun: Nonlinear effects and mode transformation

We examine the propagation of kink and longitudinal waves in the solar magnetic network. Previously, we investigated the excitation of network oscillations in vertical magnetic flux tubes through buffeting by granules and found that footpoint motions of the tubes can generate sufficient wave energy for chromospheric heating. We assumed that the kink and longitudinal waves are decoupled and linear. We overcome these limitations by treating the nonlinear MHD equations for coupled kink and longitudinal waves in a thin flux tube. For the parameters we have chosen, the thin tube approximation is valid up to the layers of formation of the emission features in the H and K lines of Ca II at a height of about 1 Mm. By solving the nonlinear, time-dependent MHD equations we are able to study the onset of wave coupling, which occurs when the Mach number of the kink waves is of the order of 0.3. We also investigate the transfer of energy from the kink to the longitudinal waves, which is important for the dissipation of the wave energy in shocks. We find that kink waves excited by footpoint motions of a flux tube generate longitudinal modes by mode coupling. For subsonic velocities, the amplitude of a longitudinal wave increases as the square of the amplitude of the transverse wave, and for amplitudes near Mach number unity, the coupling saturates and becomes linear when the energy is nearly evenly divided between the two modes.