Presentation #404.03 in the session Coronal Heating Modeling.
Magnetic reconnection plays an important role in the rapid release of stored magnetic energy in the solar corona. This includes small events like nanoflares that heat the corona to multi-million Kelvin temperatures and large events like flares and CMEs. In the magnetically closed corona, both footpoints of the field lines are essentially fixed in the dense photospheric plasma at the base. Thus, studies of reconnection must take line-tying into account. In the case of nanoflares, it is the guide field component that is line-tied. Magnetic reconnection in the corona begins in the fluid regime and is initiated by the tearing instability. Line-tying has been shown to play a stabilizing role. We present results of high-fidelity 3D visco-resistive MHD simulations with both periodic and line-tied guide-field boundary conditions. We focus on the linear and non-linear growth of the tearing instability and the development of islands (flux ropes in 3D). We show that tension forces associated with line-tying restrict the interaction and coalescence of islands, which would otherwise happen freely. We present examples where there is a modest interference with the normal tearing evolution and other examples where the tearing is shut down entirely. We discuss the implications for coronal heating and effects of heat conduction on the evolution.