It has been shown that resonant absorption is a robust physical mechanism to
explain the observed damping of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) kink waves in the
solar atmosphere due to naturally occurring plasma inhomogeneity in the
direction transverse to the direction of the magnetic field. Theoretical
studies of this damping mechanism were greatly inspired by the first
observations of post-flare standing kink modes in coronal loops using the
Transition Region And Coronal Explorer (TRACE). More recently, these studies
have been extended to explain the attenuation of propagating coronal kink waves
observed by the Coronal Multi-Channel Polarimeter (CoMP). In the present study,
for the first time we investigate the properties of propagating kink waves in
solar waveguides including the effects of both longitudinal and transverse
plasma inhomogeneity. Importantly, it is found that the wavelength is only
dependent on the longitudinal stratification and the amplitude is simply a
product of the two effects. In light of these results the advancement of solar
atmospheric magnetoseismology by exploiting high spatial/temporal resolution
observations of propagating kink waves in magnetic waveguides to determine the
length scales of the plasma inhomogeneity along and transverse to the direction
of the magnetic field is discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
