The behavior of transverse waves in nonuniform solar flux tubes. I. Comparison of ideal and resistive results

Abstract: Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves are ubiquitously observed in the solar atmosphere. Kink waves are a type of transverse MHD waves in magnetic flux tubes that are damped due to resonant absorption. The theoretical study of kink MHD waves in solar flux tubes is usually based on the simplification that the transverse variation of density is confined to a nonuniform layer much thinner than the radius of the tube, i.e., the so-called thin boundary approximation. Here, we develop a general analytic method to compute the dispersion relation and the eigenfunctions of ideal MHD waves in pressureless flux tubes with transversely nonuniform layers of arbitrary thickness. Results for kink waves are produced and are compared with fully numerical resistive MHD eigenvalue computations in the limit of small resistivity. We find that the frequency and resonant damping rate are the same in both ideal and resistive cases. The actual results for thick nonuniform layers deviate from the behavior predicted in the thin boundary approximation and strongly depend on the shape of the nonuniform layer. The eigenfunctions in ideal MHD are very different from those in resistive MHD. The ideal eigenfunctions display a global character regardless of the thickness of the nonuniform layer, while the resistive eigenfunctions are localized around the resonance and are indistinguishable from those of ordinary resistive Alfv\'en modes. Consequently, the spatial distribution of wave energy in the ideal and resistive cases is dramatically different. This poses a fundamental theoretical problem with clear observational consequences.