Numerical simulation of the heating of X-ray bright points in the solar corona

The goal of this thesis work was the investigation of the physical processes involved in evolution of solar coronal Bright Points (BPs) by means of a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) numerical simulation. We investigated the energy budget with emphasis on the relative role and contribution of adiabatic compression versus current dissipation to the formation of coronal BPs. We used a three-dimensional resistive MHD model, initialized with an extrapolation of the observed magnetic field from SOHO/MDI magnetograms. We showed quantitatively the small role of Joule heating in BP formation and concluded that it cannot be considered a viable process unless the diffusion regions have a much larger volume filling factor than currently thought. The results also indicate that compression is an important processes in the energy budget. After this we concentrated on radiative losses in optically thin plasmas and heat conduction in the model.