Click on the image above for a larger .gif version.
This simplistic cartoon shows one of a pair of Alfvenic shear waves propagating away from a model energy-release site in the corona, along a current-carrying (hence twisted) flux tube. One can spot many simplifcations in this toy model but the analysis is complicated, even though in principle the Poynting flux is all one needs to understand. The paper points out that energy transport in this case is parallel to the ambient B field, whereas in a reconnection-type event it would be locally perpendicular. This is a hard paper to read since it requires that one think above the level of MHD - not to say that many purely MHD papers are not hard. It is fairly unique in the literature in tackling this very hard problem, which in a capsule statement really captures the entire flare problem somehow.
Feb. 7, 2007 April 1, 2007