We investigate the process of formation and subsequent evolution of prominence plasma in a filament channel and its overlying arcade. We construct a three-dimensional time-dependent model of an intermediate quiescent prominence. We combine the magnet
ic field structure with one-dimensional independent simulations of many flux tubes, of a three-dimensional sheared double arcade, in which the thermal nonequilibrium process governs the plasma evolution. We have found that the condensations in the corona can be divided into two populations: threads and blobs. Threads are massive condensations that linger in the field line dips. Blobs are ubiquitous small condensations that are produced throughout the filament and overlying arcade magnetic structure, and rapidly fall to the chromosphere. The threads are the principal contributors to the total mass. The total prominence mass is in agreement with observations, assuming a reasonable filling factor. The motion of the threads is basically horizontal, while blobs move in all directions along the field. The peak velocities for both populations are comparable. We have generated synthetic images of the whole structure in an H$alpha$ proxy and in two EUV channels of the AIA instrument aboard SDO, thus showing the plasma at cool, warm, and hot temperatures. The predicted differential emission measure of our system agrees very well with observations. We conclude that the sheared-arcade magnetic structure and plasma behavior driven by thermal nonequilibrium fit well the abundant observational evidence for typical intermediate prominences.
Any successful model of coronal loops must explain a number of observed properties. For warm (~ 1 MK) loops, these include: 1. excess density, 2. flat temperature profile, 3. super-hydrostatic scale height, 4. unstructured intensity profile, and 5. 1
000--5000 s lifetime. We examine whether thermal nonequilibrium can reproduce the observations by performing hydrodynamic simulations based on steady coronal heating that decreases exponentially with height. We consider both monolithic and multi-stranded loops. The simulations successfully reproduce certain aspects of the observations, including the excess density, but each of them fails in at least one critical way. Monolithic models have far too much intensity structure, while multi-strand models are either too structured or too long-lived. Our results appear to rule out the widespread existence of heating that is both highly concentrated low in the corona and steady or quasi-steady (slowly varying or impulsive with a rapid cadence). Active regions would have a very different appearance if the dominant heating mechanism had these properties. Thermal nonequilibrium may nonetheless play an important role in prominences and catastrophic cooling events (e.g., coronal rain) that occupy a small fraction of the coronal volume. However, apparent inconsistencies between the models and observations of cooling events have yet to be understood.
The solar magnetic field is the primary agent that drives solar activity and couples the Sun to the Heliosphere. Although the details of this coupling depend on the quantitative properties of the field, many important aspects of the corona - solar wi
nd connection can be understood by considering only the general topological properties of those regions on the Sun where the field extends from the photosphere out to interplanetary space, the so-called open field regions that are usually observed as coronal holes. From the simple assumptions that underlie the standard quasi-steady corona-wind theoretical models, and that are likely to hold for the Sun, as well, we derive two conjectures on the possible structure and dynamics of coronal holes: (1) Coronal holes are unique in that every unipolar region on the photosphere can contain at most one coronal hole. (2) Coronal holes of nested polarity regions must themselves be nested. Magnetic reconnection plays the central role in enforcing these constraints on the field topology. From these conjectures we derive additional properties for the topology of open field regions, and propose several observational predictions for both the slowly varying and transient corona/solar wind.
