Understanding the heating mechanism of the solar active region atmosphere in chromosphere

Abstract Understanding the mechanisms underlying the heating of the solar atmosphere is a fundamental problem in solar physics. In this paper, we present an overview of our research on understanding the heating mechanism of the solar active region atmosphere in chromosphere. We investigate Joule heating due to the dissipation of currents perpendicular to the magnetic field by the Cowling resistivity using a data-constrained analysis based on observational and tabulated theoretical/semi-empirical solar atmosphere model data. As target region, we focus on a sunspot umbral light bridge where we find that this heating mechanism plays an important role and is also highly dynamic.