Plasma Diagnostics of Active Region Evolution and Implications for Coronal Heating

A detailed study is presented of the decaying solar active region NOAA 10103 observed with the Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (CDS), the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) and the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Electron density maps formed using Si x(356.03 Å/347.41 Å) show that the density varies from ∼10 cm in the active region core, to∼7×10 cm at the region boundaries. Over the five days of observations, the average electron density fell by ∼30 per cent. Temperature maps formed using Fe xvi(335.41 Å)/Fe xiv(334.18 Å) show electron temperatures of ∼2.34×10 K in the active region core, and ∼2.10×10 K at the region boundaries. Similarly to the electron density, there was a small decrease in the average electron temperature over the five day period. The radiative, conductive, and mass flow losses were calculated and used to determine the resultant heating rate (PH). Radiative losses were found to dominate the active region cooling process. As the region decayed, the heating rate decreased by almost a factor of five between the first and last day of observations. The heating rate was then compared to the total unsigned magnetic flux (Φtot = ∫ dA|Bz |), yielding a power-law of the form PH ∼ Φ 0.81±0.32 tot . This result suggests that waves rather than nanoflares may be the dominant heating mechanism in this active region.