Relation between Thermal and Magnetic Properties of Active Regions as a Probe of Coronal Heating Mechanisms

Abstract

We study the relation between thermal and magnetic properties of active regions in the corona observed with the soft X-ray telescope aboard Yohkoh. We derive the mean temperature and pressure of 64 mature active regions using the filter ratio technique, and examine the relationship of region size with temperature and pressure. We find that the temperature T of active regions increases with increasing region size L as T~L^0.28, while the pressure P slightly decreases with the region size as P~L^-0.16. We confirm the scaling law T~(PL)^1/3 for mature active regions found by R. Rosner, W. H. Tucker, & G. S. Vaiana. We examined the magnetic properties of active regions by analyzing 31 active regions observed with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/Michelson Doppler Imager and find the following empirical scaling law between thermal and magnetic properties,U_th~Φ^1.33,P~B^0.78,where U_th, Φ, and B are the total thermal energy content, total magnetic flux, and average magnetic flux density of active regions, respectively. The former is consistent with the results of L. Golub et al., but the latter is not. Implications of our findings for coronal heating mechanisms are discussed.