Heating of the solar atmosphere by strong damping of Alfvén waves

The heating of the solar atmosphere by strongly damped Alfvén waves that produce heating through plasma-neutral collisions is studied by solving analytically a one-dimensional model of the self-consistent plasma-neutral-electromagnetic system. We compute the vertical profile of the wave spectrum and power by a novel method, including the damping effect neglected in previous treatments, and find that the high-frequency portion of the source power spectrum is strongly damped at the lower altitudes, depositing heat there, whereas the lower-frequency perturbations are nearly undamped and can be observed in the corona and above. As a result, the power and spectrum of the waves observed above the corona is only a fraction of those at the photosphere and, contrary to some earlier supposition used in Alfven wave damping models, does not represent the energy input. We show, using the parameters of a semi-empirical model for quiet-Sun conditions, that this mechanism can generate sufficient heat to account for the radiative losses in the atmosphere, with most of the heat deposited as required at lower altitudes. We will discuss the expected observational characteristics that can be verified by and compared with the new observations from Hinode, STEREO and SDO.