The footpoints of coronal loops are constantly shuffled by convection on the solar surface, entangling the magnetic field lines. According to Parker’s coronal heating model, the intertwining of magnetic field lines results in the formation of highly intense current sheets. These current sheets facilitate reconnection, thereby converting magnetic energy into plasma energy. Previously, Parker’s model has been extensively studied using resistive magnetohydrodynamic models. However, in the coronal environment, collisionless reconnection is potentially vital as current sheets develop at kinetic scales. Collisionless reconnection, in turn, may affect the storage and release of magnetic energy and the overall heating rate. We investigate the impact of collisionless reconnection in Parker’s model using a reduced two-field model that incorporates the electron skin depth and the ion sound Larmor radius as free parameters. We conduct a series of simulations, varying the ratios between the system size and kinetic scales, and compare the results with those obtained using the resistive reduced MHD model. The simulation results suggest that the heating rate may be insensitive to the details of the reconnection mechanism.

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, grant number DE-SC0021205, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, grant number 80NSSC18K1285, and the National Science Foundation, grant number 2301337. Computations were performed on facilities at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.