THE HEATING OF THE SOLAR CORONA BY THE RESONANT ABSORPTION OF ALFVEN WAVES

In this paper, upward propagating Magnetoacoustic waves in an ideal at mosphere are considered. It is shown that the magnetic field creates a nonabsorbing reflecting layer. An equation for the resonance is deriv ed, which shows that resonance may occur for many values of the magnet ic field and of the frequency if the wavelength is matched to the stre ngth of the magnetic field. At the resonance frequencies the values of the magnetic and kinetic energies will increase to very large values, and this may account for the heating process. Consequently, for large beta-plasma the mechanism for coronal heating will be acoustic.