Relationship Between Plasma Heating and Coronal Emissions

The physical mechanisms that deposit energy into the coronal plasma and dissipate it as heat have been speculated for decades, and yet remain inconclusive. Many theoretical models have been proposed and need to be validated by observation. To distinguish these models, we take advantage of the complex magnetic-field structure and the spatial inhomogeneity of an active region, and compute the thermal structure in 3-D using the heating mechanism from each of the proposed theories. Distinctive thermal structures are expected from different heating models. As a result, each model has a unique signature in its emissions in EUV and soft X-ray that are observable by EIT/SOHO and SXT/Yohkoh. In our study, we survey the available models and compare their predicted emissions with observations. Work supported by Sun Earth Connection Theory Program of NASA