Energy distribution of nanoflares in three-dimensional simulations of coronal heating.

In a recent computational campaign [Ng et al., Astrophys. J. 747, 109, 2012] to investigate a three-dimensional (3D) model of coronal heating using reduced magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD), we have obtained scaling results of heating rate versus Lundquist number based on a series of runs in which random photospheric motions are imposed for hundreds to thousands of Alfvén time in order to obtain converged statistical values. Using this collection of numerical data, we have performed additional statistical analysis related to the formation of current sheets and heating events, or nanoflares [Parker, Astrophys. J. 330, 474, 1988]. While there have been many observations of the energy distribution of solar flares, there have not been many results based on large-scale 3D direct simulations due to obvious numerical difficulties. We will present energy distributions based on our simulations, calculated using a method employed in a 2D study [Dmitruk & Gómez, Astrophys. J., 484, L83, 1997], with power law indices that are consistent with previous studies and observations of solar flare distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]