In solar flares, energy is released impulsively and is partly converted into thermal energy of hot plasmas and kinetic energy of accelerated nonthermal particles. Despite numerous efforts, no consensus on quantifying this energy balance has yet been reached. We aim to understand the reasons for the contradicting results on energy partition obtained by various recent studies. We considered five recent studies that address the thermal-nonthermal energy partition in solar flares. Their results are reviewed, and their methods are compared and discussed in detail. The main uncertainties in deriving the energy partition are identified as (a) the derivation of the differential emission measure (DEM) distribution and (b) the role of the conductive energy loss for the thermal component, as well as (c) the determination of the low-energy cutoff for the injected electrons. The bolometric radiated energy, as a proxy for the total energy released in the flare, is a useful independent constraint on both thermal and nonthermal energetics. In most of the cases, the derived energetics are consistent with this constraint. There are indications that the thermal-nonthermal energy partition changes with flare strength: in weak flares, there appears to be a deficit of energetic electrons, while the injected nonthermal energy is sufficient to account for the thermal component in strong flares. This behavior is identified as the main cause of the dissimilar results in the studies we considered. The changing partition has two important consequences: (a) an additional direct (i.e. non-beam) heating mechanism has to be present, and (b) considering that the bolometric emission originates mainly from deeper atmospheric layers, conduction or waves are required as additional energy transport mechanisms.
We have studied the relationship between the location of EUV nonthermal broadening and high-energy particles during the large flares by using EUV imaging spectrometer onboard {\it Hinode}, Nobeyama Radio Polarimeter, Nobeyama Radioheliograph, and Atmospheric Imaging Assembly onboard {\it Solar Dynamic Observatory}. We have analyzed the five large flare events which contain thermal rich, intermediate, and thermal poor flares classified by the definition discussed in the paper. We found that, in the case of thermal rich flares, the nonthermal broadening of \ion{Fe}{24} occurred at the top of the…
Aditya-L1 and SDO Observations of a Confined X-Class Flare with an EUV Late Phase: Thermal and Nonthermal Emission, Magnetic Topology, and Flux Rope Confinement
Udaipur Solar Observatory, Physical Research Laboratory（乌代浦尔太阳观测站，物理研究实验室）；Discipline of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar（甘地纳加尔印度理工学院物理系）；Physical Research Laboratory（物理研究实验室）
This paper presents a detailed study of excess line broadening in EUV emission lines during the impulsive phase of a C-class solar flare. In this work, which utilizes data from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) onboard Hinode, the broadened line profiles were observed to be co-spatial with the two HXR footpoints as observed by RHESSI. By plotting the derived nonthermal velocity for each pixel within the Fe XV and Fe XVI rasters against its corresponding Doppler velocity a strong correlation (|r| > 0.59) was found between the two parameters for one of the footpoints. This suggested that the ex…
Context. We present an analysis of a GOES M1.8 flare with excellent observational coverage in UV, EUV, and X-ray, including observations from the instruments IRIS, SDO with AIA, Hinode/EIS, Hinode/XRT, and Solar Orbiter with the Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX). Hard X-ray emission is often observed at the footpoints of flare loops and is occasionally observed in the corona. In this flare, four nonthermal hard X-ray sources are seen. Aim. Our aim is to understand why we can observe four individual nonthermal sources in this flare and how we can characterize the physical propert…
A large number of terrestrial planets in the classical habitable zone of stars of different spectral types has already been discovered and many are expected to be discovered in near future. However, owing to the lack of knowledge on the atmospheric properties, the ambient environment of such planets are unknown. It is known that sufficient amount of Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) radiation from the star can drive hydrodynamic outflow of hydrogen that may drag heavier species from the atmosphere of the planet. If the rate of mass loss is sufficiently high then substantial amount of volatiles would e…
This paper presents measurements of the energy radiated by the lower solar atmosphere, at optical, UV, and EUV wavelengths, during an X-class solar flare (SOL2011-02-15T01:56) in response to an injection of energy assumed to be in the form of nonthermal electrons. Hard X-ray observations from RHESSI were used to track the evolution of the parameters of the nonthermal electron distribution to reveal the total power contained in flare accelerated electrons. By integrating over the duration of the impulsive phase, the total energy contained in the nonthermal electrons was found to be $>2\times10^…
The recent discovery of impulsive solar burst emission in the 30 THz band is raising new interpretation challenges. One event associated with a GOES M2 class flare has been observed simultaneously in microwaves, H-alpha, EUV, and soft X-ray bands. Although these new observations confirm some features found in the two prior known events, they exhibit time profile structure discrepancies between 30 THz, microwaves, and hard X-rays (as inferred from the Neupert effect). These results suggest a more complex relationship between 30 THz emission and radiation produced at other wavelength ranges. The…
Simultaneous solar flare observations with SDO and RHESSI provide spatially resolved information about hot plasma and energetic particles in flares. RHESSI allows the properties of both hot (> 8 MK) thermal plasma and nonthermal electron distributions to be inferred, while SDO/AIA is more sensitive to lower temperatures. We present and implement a new method to reconstruct electron distribution functions from SDO/AIA data. The combined analysis of RHESSI and AIA data allows the electron distribution function to be inferred over the broad energy range from ~0.1 keV up to a few tens of keV. The …
A ubiquitous presence of weak energy releases is one of the most promising hypotheses to explain coronal heating, referred to as the nanoflare hypothesis. The accelerated electrons associated with such weak heating events are also expected to give rise to coherent impulsive emission via plasma instabilities in the meterwave radio band, making this a promising spectral window to look for their presence. Recently \citet{Mondal2020b} reported the presence of weak impulsive emissions from quiet Sun regions which seem to meet the requirements of being radio counterparts of the hypothesized nanoflar…
This study entails the fourth part of a global flare energetics project, in which the mass $m_{\mathrm{cme}}$, kinetic energy $E_{\mathrm{kin}}$, and the gravitational potential energy $E_{\mathrm{grav}}$ of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is measured in 399 M and X-class flare events observed during the first 3.5 yrs of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission, using a new method based on the EUV dimming effect. The EUV dimming is modeled in terms of a radial adiabatic expansion process, which is fitted to the observed evolution of the total emission measure of the CME source region. The mo…
Recently nonthermal radio transients from the quiet sun have been discovered and it has been hypothesised using rough calculations that they might be important for coronal heating. It is well realized that energy calculations using coherent emissions are often subject to poorly constrained parameters and hence have large uncertainties associated with them. However energy estimates using observations in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray bands are routinely done and the techniques are pretty well established. This work presents our first attempt to identify the EUV counterparts of the…
In this Letter, we perform a detailed analysis of the M5.5-class eruptive flare occurring in active region 12929 on 2022 January 20. The eruption of a hot channel generates a fast coronal mass ejection (CME) and a dome-shaped extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wave at speeds of 740$-$860 km s$^{-1}$. The CME is associated with a type II radio burst, implying that the EUV wave is a fast-mode shock wave. During the impulsive phase, the flare shows quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in EUV, hard X-ray, and radio wavelengths. The periods of QPPs range from 18 s to 113 s, indicating that flare energy is relea…
Solar flares show remarkable variety of the energy partitioning between thermal and nonthermal components. Those with a prominent nonthermal component but only a modest thermal one are particularly well suited to study the direct effect of the nonthermal electrons on plasma heating. Here, we analyze such a well observed, impulsive single-spike nonthermal event, a SOL2013-11-05T035054 solar flare, where the plasma heating can be entirely attributed to the energy losses of these impulsively accelerated electrons. Evolution of the energy budget of thermal and nonthermal components during the flar…
Coronal hard X-ray (HXR) and continuum gamma-ray sources associated with the impulsive phase of solar flares have been the subject of renewed interest in recent years. They have been interpreted in terms of thin-target, nonthermal bremsstrahlung emission. This interpretation has led to rather extreme physical requirements in some cases. For example, in one case, essentially all of the electrons in the source must be accelerated to nonthermal energies to account for the coronal HXR source. In other cases, the extremely hard photon spectra of the coronal continuum gamma-ray emission suggest that…
We report the first science results from the newly completed Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA), which obtained excellent microwave imaging spectroscopy observations of SOL2017-09-10, a classic partially-occulted solar limb flare associated with an erupting flux rope. This event is also well-covered by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) in hard X-rays (HXRs). We present an overview of this event focusing on microwave and HXR data, both associated with high-energy nonthermal electrons, and discuss them within the context of the flare geometry and evolution …
We present an X-ray imaging and spectroscopic study of a partially occulted C7.7 flare on 2003 April 24 observed by RHESSI that accompanied a prominence eruption observed by TRACE. (1) The activation and rise of the prominence occurs during the preheating phase of the flare. The initial X-ray emission appears as a single coronal source at one leg of the prominence and it then splits into a double source. Such a source splitting happens three times, each coinciding with an increased X-ray flux and plasma temperature, suggestive of fast reconnection in a localized current sheet and an enhanced e…
Solar flares are sudden energy release events in the solar corona, resulting from magnetic reconnection, that accelerates particles and heats the ambient plasma. During a flare, there are often multiple, temporally and spatially separated individual energy release episodes that can be difficult to resolve depending on the observing instrument. We present multi-wavelength imaging and spectroscopy observations of multiple electron acceleration episodes during a GOES B1.7-class two-ribbon flare on 2012 February 25, observed simultaneously with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at 1--2 GHz…
We discuss the IR/visible/VUV continuum emission of the impulsive phase of a solar flare, using TRACE UV and EUV images to characterize the spectral energy distribution. This continuum has been poorly observed but dominates the radiant energy energetically. Recent bolometric observations of solar flares furthermore point to the impulsive phase as the source of a major fraction of the radiant energy. This component appears to exhibit a Balmer jump and thus must originate in an optically thin region above the quiet photosphere, with an elevated temperature and strong ionization.
In this study we synthesize the results of four previous studies on the global energetics of solar flares and associated coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which include magnetic, thermal, nonthermal, and CME energies in 399 solar M and X-class flare events observed during the first 3.5 years of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission. Our findings are: (1) The sum of the mean nonthermal energy of flare-accelerated particles ($E_{\mathrm{nt}}$), the energy of direct heating ($E_{\mathrm{dir}}$), and the energy in coronal mass ejections ($E_{\mathrm{CME}}$), which are the primary energy dissip…
Extreme-ultraviolet late phase (ELP) refers to the second extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) radiation enhancement observed in certain solar flares, which usually occurs tens of minutes to several hours after the peak of soft X-ray emission. The coronal loop system that hosts the ELP emission is often different from the main flaring arcade, and the enhanced EUV emission therein may imply an additional heating process. However, the origin of the ELP remains rather unclear. Here we present the analysis of a C1.4 flare that features such an ELP, which is also observed in microwave wavelengths by the Expan…
Ever-increasing multi-frequency imaging of solar observations suggests that solar flares often involve more than one magnetic fluxtube. Some of the fluxtubes are closed, while others can contain open field. The relative proportion of nonthermal electrons among those distinct loops is highly important for understanding the energy release, particle acceleration, and transport. The access of nonthermal electrons to the open field is further important as the open field facilitates the solar energetic particle (SEP) escape from the flaring site, and thus controls the SEP fluxes in the solar system,…
The explanation of the coronal heating problem potentially lies in the existence of nanoflares, numerous small-scale heating events occuring across the whole solar disk. In this paper, we present the first imaging spectroscopy X-ray observations of three quiet Sun flares during the NuSTAR solar campaigns on 2016 July 26 and 2017 March 21, concurrent with SDO/AIA observations. Two of the three events showed time lags of a few minutes between peak X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emissions. Isothermal fits with rather low temperatures in the range $3.2-4.1$ MK and emission measures of $(0.6-1…
Despite being the most prominent emission line in the solar spectrum, there has been a notable lack of studies devoted to variations in Ly$α$ emission during solar flares in recent years. However, the few examples that do exist have shown Ly$α$ emission to be a substantial radiator of the total energy budget of solar flares (on the order of 10%). It is also a known driver of fluctuations in earth's ionosphere. The EUV Variability Experiment (EVE) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory now provides broadband, photometric Ly$α$ data at 10 s cadence with its Multiple EUV Grating Spectrograph-Phot…
Magnetic flux ropes are the centerpiece of solar eruptions. Direct measurements for the magnetic field of flux ropes are crucial for understanding the triggering and energy release processes, yet they remain heretofore elusive. Here we report microwave imaging spectroscopy observations of an M1.4-class solar flare that occurred on 2017 September 6, using data obtained by the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array. This flare event is associated with a partial eruption of a twisted filament observed in Hα by the Goode Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory. The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) a…
The nonthermal broadening of spectral lines formed in the solar corona is often used to seek the evidence of Alfvén waves propagating in the corona. To have a better understanding of the variation of line widths at different altitudes, we measured the line widths of the strong Fe \textsc{xii} 192.4, 193.5, and 195.1 \mboxÅ and Fe \textsc{xiii} 202.0 \mboxÅ in an off-limb southern coronal hole up to 1.5 $R_\odot$ observed by the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EIS) on board the \textit{Hinode} satellite. We compared our measurements to the predictions from the Alfvén Wave Solar Model (AWSoM) …
We explored simultaneous observations of chromospheric evaporation and condensation during the impulsive phase of a C6.7 flare on 9 May 2019. The solar flare was simultaneously observed by multiple instruments, i.e., the New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST), the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), the Fermi, the Mingantu Spectral Radioheliograph, and the Nobeyama Radio Polarimeters. Using the single Gaussian fitting and the moment analysis technique, redshifted velocities at slow speeds of 15-19 km/s are found in the cool lines of C II and Si IV at one f…
Radio Diagnostics of Particle Acceleration in Solar Flares with SKAO Observations
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（坎普尔印度理工学院）；New Jersey Institute of Technology（新泽西理工学院）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学）
During its commissioning phase in 2020, the Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) on board the Solar Orbiter spacecraft observed 69 microflares. The two most significant events from this set (of GOES class B2 and B6) were observed on-disk from the spacecraft as well as from Earth and analysed in terms of the spatial, temporal, and spectral characteristics. We complement the observations from the STIX instrument with EUV imagery from SDO/AIA and GOES soft X-ray data by adding imaging and plasma diagnostics over different temperature ranges for a detailed microflare case study that is…
How much energy do solar active regions (ARs) typically radiate during quiescent periods? This is a fundamental question for storage and release models of flares and ARs, yet it is presently poorly answered by observations. Here we use the "Sun-as-a-point-source" spectra from the EUV Variability Experiment (EVE) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to provide a novel estimate of radiative energy losses of an evolving active region. Although EVE provides excellent spectral (5-105nm) and temperature (2-25MK) coverage for AR analysis, to our knowledge, these data have not been used for this pu…
Energy Evolution from the Chromosphere to the Heliosphere in the 2021 October 28 Solar Eruption
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian（哈佛与史密森尼天体物理中心）；Southwest Research Institute（西南研究院）；University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学）；New Jersey Institute of Technology（新泽西理工学院）；Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory（普林斯顿等离子体物理实验室）；Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学月球与行星实验室）；U.S. Naval Research Laboratory（美国海军研究实验室）；University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩县分校）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Montana State University（蒙大拿州立大学）
Observational evidence is presented for the merging of a downward-propagating plasmoid with a looptop kernel during an occulted limb event on 2007 January 25. RHESSI lightcurves in the 9-18 keV energy range, as well as that of the 245 MHz channel of the Learmonth Solar Observatory, show enhanced nonthermal emission in the corona at the time of the merging suggesting that additional particle acceleration took place. This was attributed to a secondary episode of reconnection in the current sheet that formed between the two merging sources. RHESSI images were used to establish a mean downward vel…
Current sheet is believed to be the region of energy dissipation via magnetic reconnection in solar flares. However, its properties, for example, the dynamic process, have not been fully understood. Here we report a current sheet in a solar flare (SOL2017-09-10T16:06) that was clearly observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory as well as the EUV Imaging Spectrometer on Hinode. The high-resolution imaging and spectroscopic observations show that the current sheet is mainly visible in high temperature (>10 MK) passbands, particularly in the Fe XXIV 192.0…
We report the intriguing large-scale dynamic phenomena associated with the M6.5 flare~(SOL2015-06-22T18:23) in NOAA active region 12371, observed by RHESSI, Fermi, and the Atmospheric Image Assembly (AIA) and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO). The most interesting feature of this event is a third ribbon (R3) arising in the decay phase, propagating along a dimming channel (seen in EUV passbands) towards a neighboring sunspot. The propagation of R3 occurs in the presence of hard X-ray footpoint emission, and is broadly visible at temperatures from 0.6~MK to over 10~MK …
The Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) is the HXR instrument onboard Solar Orbiter designed to observe solar flares over a broad range of flare sizes, between 4-150 keV. We report the first STIX observations of microflares recorded during the instrument commissioning phase in order to investigate the STIX performance at its detection limit. This first result paper focuses on the temporal and spectral evolution of STIX microflares occuring in the AR12765 in June 2020, and compares the STIX measurements with GOES/XRS, SDO/AIA, and Hinode/XRT. For the observed microflares of the GOE…
An important question in solar physics is whether solar microflares, the smallest currently observable flare events in X-rays, possess the same energetic properties as large flares. Recent surveys have suggested that microflares may be less efficient particle accelerators than large flares, and hence contribute less nonthermal energy, which may have implications for coronal heating mechanisms. We therefore explore the energetic properties of microflares by combining Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray measurements. We present forward-fitting differential emission measure (DEM) analysis of 10 m…
In this paper, we report our multiwavelength imaging observations of chromospheric evaporation in a C5.5 circular-ribbon flare (CRF) on 2014 August 24. The flare was observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the \textit{Solar Dynamics Observatory} (\textit{SDO}), X-ray Telescope (XRT) on board the \textit{Hinode} spacecraft, and ground-based Nobeyama Radioheliograph (NoRH). The CRF consisted of a discrete circular ribbon with a diameter of $\sim$1$\arcmin$ and a short inner ribbon observed in ultraviolet (UV), extreme-ultraviolet (EUV), soft X-ray (SXR), and especially in 17 …
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process converting magnetic energy into not only plasma energy but also particle energy in various astrophysical phenomena. In this letter, we show a unique dataset of a solar flare where various plasmoids were formed by a continually stretched current sheet. EUV images captured reconnection inflows, outflows, and particularly the recurring plasma blobs (plasmoids). X-ray images reveal nonthermal emission sources at the lower end of the current sheet, presumably as large plasmoids with a sufficiently amount of energetic electrons trapped in. In t…
One of the main science questions of the Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe missions deals with understanding how electrons in the lower solar corona are accelerated and how they subsequently access interplanetary space. We aim to investigate the electron acceleration and energy release sites as well as the manner in which accelerated electrons access the interplanetary space in the case of the SOL2021-02-18T18:05 event, a GOES A8 class microflare associated with a coronal jet. This study takes advantage of three different vantage points, Solar Orbiter, STEREO-A, and Earth, with observations…
In this paper, we reanalyze the M1.2 confined flare with a large extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) late phase on 2011 September 9, focusing on its energy partition. The radiation ($\sim$5.4$\times$10$^{30}$ erg) in 1$-$70 Å is nearly eleven times larger than the radiation in 70$-$370 Å, and is nearly 180 times larger than the radiation in 1$-$8 Å. The peak thermal energy of the post-flare loops is estimated to be (1.7$-$1.8)$\times$10$^{30}$ erg based on a simplified schematic cartoon. Based on previous results of Enthalpy-Based Thermal Evolution of Loops (EBTEL) simulation, the energy inputs in the m…
Multi-point study of the energy release and transport in the 28 March 2022, M4-flare using STIX, EUI, and AIA during the first Solar Orbiter nominal mission perihelion
Where particle acceleration and plasma heating take place in relation to magnetic reconnection is a fundamental question for solar flares. We report analysis of an M7.7 flare on 2012 July 19 observed by SDO/AIA and RHESSI. Bi-directional outflows in forms of plasmoid ejections and contracting cusp-shaped loops originate between an erupting flux rope and underlying flare loops at speeds of typically 200-300 km/s up to 1050 km/s. These outflows are associated with spatially separated double coronal X-ray sources with centroid separation decreasing with energy. The highest temperature is located …
First results from PADRE/MeDDEA: X-rays from a flare and its CME
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland（西北瑞士应用科学与艺术大学）；ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Université Paris Cité（巴黎西岱大学）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局戈达德太空飞行中心）；American University（美利坚大学）；Southwest Research Institute（西南研究所）；Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California（加州大学空间科学实验室）
