Influence of Electric Current Filamentation on the Efficiency of Energy Release in Coronal Magnetic Loops

The conditions for filamentation in coronal magnetic loops are investigated. In such loops fairly large electric currents can exist and manifestations of current self-focusing effects are possible. For typical parameters of coronal magnetic loops filamentation is shown to arise at currents exceeding 5 10{^9} A. The characteristic thickness of the filaments and their total number are determined for typical plasma parameters and electric currents in loops. As a rule, the cross sections of the filaments have a total area smaller than the cross-sectional area of the coronal magnetic loop. For this reason, the phenomenon of filamentation leads to an increase in the total energy release from the system of filaments at the same total current that existed in the original homogeneous loop. At a typical number of filaments observed in experimental data the total energy release from the loop is shown to increase approximately by an order of magnitude. This effect vanishes at a sufficiently large number of filaments, when the total area of their cross sections almost coincides with the cross-sectional area of the loop.