Abstract Models of heating the weakly ionized solar atmosphere by collisional damping of upward-propagating Alfvén waves, calculated under the assumption that only incompressible (intermediate-mode) MHD waves are involved, have predicted heating rates that do not agree with the empirically inferred radiative energy loss from the chromosphere. The assumption that incompressible intermediate-mode waves can propagate through the inhomogeneous three-dimensional solar atmosphere without coupling to compressible fast- or slow-mode waves is shown to restrict the configuration of the ambient magnetic field, requiring symmetry conditions that are not satisfied in the solar atmosphere. In a magnetic field without those symmetries, propagating Alfvén waves necessarily generate waves in other MHD modes, which must be included in any realistic model of wave heating.
V. M. Vasyliūnas (Thu,) studied this question.
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