The properties that are expected of "hot" non-flaring plasmas due to nanoflare heating in active regions are investigated using hydrodynamic modeling tools, including a two-fluid development of the Enthalpy Based Thermal Evolution of Loops code. Here we study a single nanoflare and show that while simple models predict an emission measure distribution extending well above 10 MK, which is consistent with cooling by thermal conduction, many other effects are likely to limit the existence and detectability of such plasmas. These include: differential heating between electrons and ions, ionization non-equilibrium, and for short nanoflares, the time taken for the coronal density to increase. The most useful temperature range to look for this plasma, often called the "smoking gun" of nanoflare heating, lies between 10 6.6 and 10 7 K. Signatures of the actual heating may be detectable in some instances.

The goal of the SunPy project is to facilitate and promote the use and development of community-led, free, and open source data analysis software for solar physics based on the scientific Python environment. The project achieves this goal by developing and maintaining the sunpy core package and supporting an ecosystem of affiliated packages. This paper describes the first official stable release (version 1.0) of the core package, as well as the project organization and infrastructure. This paper concludes with a discussion of the future of the SunPy project.

The relative amount of high-temperature plasma has been found to be a useful diagnostic to determine the frequency of coronal heating on sub-resolution structures. When the loops are infrequently heated, a broad emission measure (EM) over a wider range of temperatures is expected. A narrower EM is expected for high-frequency heating where the loops are closer to equilibrium. The soft X-ray spectrum contains many spectral lines that provide high-temperature diagnostics, including lines from Fe xvii–xix. This region of the solar spectrum will be observed by the Marshall Grazing Incidence Spectrometer (MaGIXS) in 2020. In this paper, we derive the expected spectral line intensity in MaGIXS to varying amounts of high-temperature plasma to demonstrate that a simple line ratio provides a powerful diagnostic to determine the heating frequency. Similarly, we examine ratios of AIA channel intensities, filter ratios from a XRT, and energy bands from the FOXSI sounding rocket to determine their sensitivity to this parameter. We find that both FOXSI and MaGIXS provide good diagnostic capabilities for high-temperature plasma. We then compare the predicted line ratios to the output of a numerical model and confirm that the MaGIXS ratios provide an excellent diagnostic for heating frequency.

In coronal loop modeling, it is commonly assumed that the loops are semicircular with a uniform cross-sectional area. However, observed loops are rarely semicircular, and extrapolations of the magnetic field show that the field strength decreases with height, implying that the cross-sectional area expands with height. We examine these two assumptions directly, to understand how they affect the hydrodynamic and radiative response of short, hot loops to strong, impulsive electron beam heating events. Both the magnitude and rate of area expansion impact the dynamics directly, and an expanding cross section significantly lengthens the time for a loop to cool and drain, increases upflow durations, and suppresses sound waves. The standard T ∼ n 2 relation for radiative cooling does not hold with expanding loops, which cool with relatively little draining. An increase in the eccentricity of loops, on the other hand, only increases the draining timescale, and is a minor effect in general. Spectral line intensities are also strongly impacted by the variation in the cross-sectional area because they depend on both the volume of the emitting region as well as the density and ionization state. With a larger expansion, the density is reduced, so the lines at all heights are relatively reduced in intensity, and because of the increase of cooling times, the hottest lines remain bright for significantly longer. Area expansion is critical to accurate modeling of the hydrodynamics and radiation, and observations are needed to constrain the magnitude, rate, and location of the expansion—or lack thereof.