Can we rely on EUV emission to identify coronal waveguides?

Context. Traditional models of coronal oscillations rely on a modelling of the coronal structures that support them as compact cylindrical waveguides. An alternative model of the structure of the corona has recently been proposed, in which the thin strand-like coronal loops, that are observed in the extreme-UV (EUV) emission are the result of the line-of-sight integration of warps in more complex coronal structures. This is referred to as the coronal veil model. Aims. We extend the implications of the coronal veil model of the solar corona to models of coronal oscillations. Methods. Using convection-zone-to-corona simulations with the radiation-magnetohydrodynamics (rMHD) code Bifrost, we analysed the structure of the self-consistently formed simulated corona. We focused on the spatial variability of the volumetric emissivity of the Fe IX 171.073 Å EUV line and on the variability of the Alfvén speed, which captures the density and magnetic structuring of the simulated corona. We traced features associated with large magnitudes of the Alfvén speed gradient, which trap MHD waves and act as coronal waveguides. We searched for the correspondence with emitting regions, which appear as strand-like loops in the line-of-sight-integrated EUV emission. Results. We find that the cross sections of the waveguides bounded by large Alfvén speed gradients become less circular and more distorted with increasing height in the solar atmosphere. The waveguide filling factors corresponding to the fraction of the waveguides filled with plasma that emits in the given EUV wavelength range from 0.09–0.44. This suggests that we can only observe a small fraction of the waveguide. Similarly, the projected waveguide widths in the plane of the sky are several times larger than the widths of the apparent loops that are observed in the EUV. Conclusions. We conclude that the coronal veil structure is independent of the model. As a result, we find a lack of straightforward correspondence between peaks in the integrated emission profile that constitute apparent coronal loops and regions of plasma bound by a large Alfvén speed gradient that act as waveguides. Coronal waveguides cannot be reliably identified based on emission in a single EUV wavelength is not reliable in the simulated corona formed in convection-zone-to-corona models.