Hydrodynamic Simulation of a Nanoflare-heated Multistrand Solar Atmospheric Loop

There is a growing body of evidence that the plasma loops seen with current instrumentation (SOHO, TRACE, and Hinode) may consist of many subresolution elements or strands. Thus, the overall plasma evolution we observe in these features could be the cumulative result of numerous individual strands undergoing sporadic heating. This paper presents a short ( <IMG SRC="eq-00001.gif" ALT="10^{9}\ \mathrm{cm}\,\equiv 10\ \mathrm{Mm}\,"/> 109 cm [?] 10 Mm ) "global loop" as 125 individual strands, where each strand is modeled independently by a one-dimensional hydrodynamic simulation. The energy-release mechanism across the strands consists of localized, discrete heating events (nanoflares). The strands are "coupled" together through the frequency distribution of the total energy input to the loop, which follows a power-law distribution with index a. The location and lifetime of each energy event is random. Although a typical strand can go through a series of well-defined heating/cooling cycles, when the strands are combined, the overall quasi-static emission-measure-weighted thermal profile for the global loop reproduces a hot apex/cool base structure. Localized cool plasma blobs are seen to travel along individual strands, which could cause the loop to "disappear" from coronal emission and to appear in transition or chromospheric emission. As a increases (from 0 to 2.29 to 3.29), more weight is given to the smallest heating episodes. Consequently, the overall global loop apex temperature increases, while the variation of the temperature around that value decreases. Any further increase in a saturates the loop apex temperature variations at the current simulation resolution. The effect of increasing the number of strands and the loop length, as well as the implications of these results for possible future observing campaigns for TRACE and Hinode, are discussed.