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Small-scale impulsive events, known as nanoflares, are thought to be one of the prime candidates that can keep the solar corona hot at its multi-million Kelvin temperature. Individual nanoflares are difficult to detect with the current generation instruments; however, their presence can be inferred through indirect techniques such as a Differential Emission Measure (DEM) analysis. Here we employ this technique to investigate the possibility of nanoflare heating of the quiet corona during the minimum of solar cycle 24. During this minimum, active regions (ARs) were absent on the solar-disk for extended periods. In the absence of ARs, X-ray bright points (XBP) are the dominant contributor to disk-integrated X-rays. We estimate the DEM of the XBPs using observations from the Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) onboard the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamic Observatory. XBPs consist of small-scale loops associated with bipolar magnetic fields. We simulate such XBP loops using the EBTEL hydrodynamic code. The lengths and magnetic field strengths of these loops are obtained through a potential field extrapolation of the photospheric magnetogram. Each loop is assumed to be heated by random nanoflares having an energy that depends on the loop properties. The composite nanoflare energy distribution for all the loops has a power-law slope close to -2.5. The simulation output is then used to obtain the integrated DEM. It agrees remarkably well with the observed DEM at temperatures above 1 MK, suggesting that the nanoflare distribution, as predicted by our model, can explain the XBP heating., Submitted in the Astrophysical Journal, 20 pages, 10 figures

The heating of the solar corona is one of the big questions in astrophysics. Rapid pulses called nanoflares are among the best candidate mechanisms. The analysis of the time variability of coronal X-ray emission is potentially a very useful tool to detect impulsive events. We analyze the small-scale variability of a solar active region in a high cadence Hinode/XRT observation. The dataset allows us to detect very small deviations of emission fluctuations from the distribution expected for a constant rate. We discuss the deviations in the light of the pulsed-heating scenario., 6 pages, 4 figures

It is generally agreed that small impulsive energy bursts called nanoflares are responsible for at least some of the Sun's hot corona, but whether they are the explanation for most of the multimillion-degree plasma has been a matter of ongoing debate. We present here evidence that nanoflares are widespread in an active region observed by the X-Ray Telescope on board the Hinode mission. The distributions of intensity fluctuations have small but important asymmetries, whether taken from individual pixels, multipixel subregions, or the entire active region. Negative fluctuations (corresponding to reduced intensity) are greater in number but weaker in amplitude, so that the median fluctuation is negative compared to a mean of zero. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that only part of this asymmetry can be explained by Poisson photon statistics. The remainder is explainable through a tendency for exponentially decreasing intensity, such as would be expected from a cooling plasma produced from a nanoflare. We suggest that nanoflares are a universal heating process within active regions.

Nanoflares, short and intense heat pulses within spatially unresolved magnetic strands, are now considered a leading candidate to solve the coronal heating problem. However, the frequent occurrence of nanoflares requires that flare-hot plasma be present in the corona at all times. Its detection has proved elusive until now, in part because the intensities are predicted to be very faint. Here, we report on the analysis of an active region observed with five filters by Hinode/X-Ray Telescope (XRT) in 2006 November. We have used the filter ratio method to derive maps of temperature and emission measure (EM) both in soft and hard ratios. These maps are approximate in that the plasma is assumed to be isothermal along each line of sight. Nonetheless, the hardest available ratio reveals the clear presence of plasma around 10 MK. To obtain more detailed information about the plasma properties, we have performed Monte Carlo simulations assuming a variety of nonisothermal EM distributions along the lines of sight. We find that the observed filter ratios imply bi-modal distributions consisting of a strong cool (log T ~ 6.3 – 6.5) component and a weaker (few percent) and hotter (6.6 < log T < 7.2) component. The data are consistent with bi-modal distributions along all lines of sight, i.e., throughout the active region. We also find that the isothermal temperature inferred from a filter ratio depends sensitively on the precise temperature of the cool component. A slight shift of this component can cause the hot component to be obscured in a hard ratio measurement. Consequently, temperature maps made in hard and soft ratios tend to be anti-correlated. We conclude that this observation supports the presence of widespread nanoflaring activity in the active region.