Newly discovered source of turbulence and heating in the solar chromosphere

This report describes a set of simulations and analytical theory showing that solar atmospheric flows originating in the photosphere will frequently drive a previously unidentified thermal plasma instability that rapidly develops into turbulence.

Though this turbulence is small scale (centimeters to a few meters), it will modify the conductivity, temperatures, and energy flows through much of the chromosphere. Incorporating the effects of this turbulence, and other small-scale turbulence, into large-scale models of solar and stellar atmospheres will improve physicists' ability to model energy flows with important consequences for the predicted temperatures and radiation patterns.