Seminar
The coronal heating problem: why MHD waves are trendy

Resumen

The coronal heating problem has been with us for almost 70 years now. Among the different proposed explanations, wave-based heating mechanisms are recurrently invoked. In the last decade, a wealth of high resolution observations have shown that wave-like dynamics is present at almost all layers of the solar atmosphere. As a consequence, a renewed interest has grown on their role in plasma heating mechanisms. We will discuss a series of aspects related to the current status of MHD wave heating of the solar corona. The talk will focus on the following ones: a) recent observational discoveries of waves and their relevance to the heating problem; b) our theoretical understanding on their nature and properties; c) our current level of comprehension of the sequence of physical processes that link oscillations with dissipation and heat conversion; and d) the merits and faults of current theories, including suggestions for the way forward in both theory and observations.