Click on the image above for a larger .gif version.
It is a standard no-reconnection cartoon, suited for another example of a "monolithic" flux tube. Here the wrinkle is to combine the 1D radiation hydrodynamics model, which defines the structure, with a Fokker-Planck treatment of particle transport (which defines the energy). Unfortunately the spiral line emerging from the black box on top (actually, a blue box in this cartoon) is meant to represent an electron trajectory rather than an Alfven wave.
As noted in the paper, this treatment (though still deficient in several ways*) may handle "evaporation" better because it deals more accurately with low-energy electrons in the source. These result in strong heating (probably monotonically increasing with height, in terms of per-particle energy deposition rate) and thus stronger evaporation than a particle transport model implying heating in discrete layers deeper in the atmosphere.
*electrodynamics, radiative transfer, three-dimensionality, waves
8 February 2010
23 December 2010