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Register a new userThe Impulsive Phase in Solar Flares: Recent Multi-wavelength Results and their Implications for Microwave Modeling and Observations
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This short paper reviews several recent key observations of the processes occurring in the lower atmosphere (chromosphere and photosphere) during flares. These are: evidence for compact and fragmentary structure in the flare chromosphere, the conditions in optical flare footpoints, step-like variations in the magnetic field during the flare impulsive phase, and hot, dense chromospheric footpoints. The implications of these observations for microwaves are also discussed.
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Using a recently developed analytical procedure, we determine the rate of magnetic reconnection in the standard model of eruptive solar flares. During the late phase, the neutral line is located near the lower tip of the reconnection current sheet, and the upper region of the current sheet is bifurcated into a pair of Petschek-type shocks. Despite the presence of these shocks, the reconnection rate remains slow if the resistivity is uniform and the flow is laminar. Fast reconnection is achieved only if there is some additional mechanism that can shorten the length of the diffusion region at the neutral line. Observations of plasma flows by the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) on Hinode imply that the diffusion region is in fact quite short. Two possible mechanisms for reducing the length of the diffusion region are localized resistivity and MHD turbulence.
Solar flares often happen after a preflare / preheating phase, which is almost or entirely thermal. In contrast, there are the so-called early impulsive flares that do not show a (significant) preflare heating but instead often show the Neupert effect--a relationship where the impulsive phase is followed by a gradual, cumulative-like, thermal response. This has been interpreted as a dominance of nonthermal energy release at the impulsive phase, even though a similar phenomenology is expected if the thermal and nonthermal energies are released in comparable amounts at the impulsive phase. Nevertheless, some flares do show a good quantitative correspondence between the nonthermal electron energy input and plasma heating, in such cases the thermal response was weak, which results in calling them cold flares. We undertook a systematic search of such events among early impulsive flares registered by Konus-Wind instrument in the triggered mode from 11/1994 to 04/2017 and selected 27 cold flares based on relationships between HXR (Konus-Wind) and SXR (GOES) emission. For these events we put together all available microwave data from different instruments. We obtained temporal and spectral parameters of HXR and microwave emissions of the events and examined correlations between them. We found that, compared with a `mean flare, the cold flares: (i) are weaker, shorter, and harder in the X-ray domain, (ii) are harder and shorter, but not weaker in the microwaves, (iii) have a significantly higher spectral peak frequencies in the microwaves. We discuss the possible physical reasons for these distinctions and implication of the finding.
There are relatively few observations of UV emission during the impulsive phases of solar flares, so the nature of that emission is poorly known. Photons produced by solar flares can resonantly scatter off atoms and ions in the corona. Based on off-limb measurements by SOHO/UVCS, we derive the O VI $lambda$1032 luminosities for 29 flares during the impulsive phase and the Ly$alpha$ luminosities of 5 flares, and we compare them with X-ray luminosities from GOES measurements. The upper transition region and lower transition region luminosities of the events observed are comparable. They are also comparable to the luminosity of the X-ray emitting gas at the beginning of the flare, but after 10-15 minutes the X-ray luminosity usually dominates. In some cases we can use Doppler dimming to estimate flow speeds of the O VI emitting gas, and 5 events show speeds in the 40 to 80 $rm km s^{-1}$ range. The O VI emission could originate in gas evaporating to fill the X-ray flare loops, in heated chromospheric gas at the footpoints, or in heated prominence material in the coronal mass ejection. All three sources may contribute in different events or even in a single event, and the relative timing of UV and X-ray brightness peaks, the flow speeds, and the total O VI luminosity favor each source in one or more events.
We have studied the chromospheric evaporation flow during the impulsive phase of the flare by using the Hinode/EIS observation and 1D hydrodynamic numerical simulation coupled to the time-dependent ionization. The observation clearly shows that the strong redshift can be observed at the base of the flaring loop only during the impulsive phase. We performed two different numerical simulations to reproduce the strong downflows in FeXII and FeXV during the impulsive phase. By changing the thermal conduction coefficient, we carried out the numerical calculation of chromospheric evaporation in the thermal conduction dominant regime (conductivity coefficient kappa0 = classical value) and the enthalpy flux dominant regime (kappa0 = 0.1 x classical value). The chromospheric evaporation calculation in the enthalpy flux dominant regime could reproduce the strong redshift at the base of the flare during the impulsive phase. This result might indicate that the thermal conduction can be strongly suppressed in some cases of flare. We also find that time-dependent ionization effect is importance to reproduce the strong downflows in Fe XII and Fe XV.
In this article, we review some key aspects of a multi-wavelength flare which have essentially contributed to form a standard flare model based on the magnetic reconnection. The emphasis is given on the recent observations taken by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) on the X-ray emission originating from different regions of the coronal loops. We also briefly summarize those observations which do not seem to accommodate within the canonical flare picture and discuss the challenges for future investigations.
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