Turbulent Coronal Heating and the Distribution of Nanoflares

We perform direct numerical simulations of an externally driven two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic system over extended periods of time to simulate the dynamics of a transverse section of a solar coronal loop. A stationary and large-scale magnetic forcing was imposed, to model the photospheric motions at the magnetic loop footpoints. A turbulent stationary regime is reached, which corresponds to energy dissipation rates consistent with the heating requirements of coronal loops. The temporal behavior of quantities such as the energy dissipation rate shows clear indications of intermittency, which are exclusively due to the strong nonlinearity of the system. We tentatively associate these impulsive events of magnetic energy dissipation (from 5 × 1024 to 1026 ergs) to the so-called nanoflares. A statistical analysis of these events yields a power-law distribution as a function of their energies with a negative slope of 1.5, which is consistent with those obtained for flare energy distributions reported from X-ray observations.