Abstract We consider the propagation of Alfvèn waves in a viscous and resistive isothermal atmosphere with constant rate of ionization. For consistency with one-dimensional magnetohydrostatic equilibrium the external magnetic field may be either (i) uniform of arbitrary direction or (ii) horizontal and decaying with altitude on twice the scale height. Exact solutions are obtained in terms of Bessel and hypergeometric functions, which include as particular cases earlier results (Ferraro & Plumpton 1958, Campos 1983c, Schwartz & Cally & Bel 1984); it is argued that the phase mixing approximation (Heyvaerts & Priest 1983) uses an incorrect form of the wave equation and makes other questionable assumptions. It is shown that Alfvèn waves are liable to intense localized damping by fluid viscosity and electrical resistance; this could be relevant to atmospheric heating by wave dissipation.


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    Title :

    On the propagation of Alfven waves in a doubly-diffusive atmosphere


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    1990-01-01


    Size :

    11 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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