Abstract The acceleration and transport of energetic electrons during solar flares is one of the outstanding topics in solar physics. Recent X-ray and radio imaging and spectroscopy observations have provided diagnostics of the distribution of nonthermal electrons and suggested that, in certain flare events, electrons are primarily accelerated in the loop top and likely experience trapping and/or scattering effects. By combining the focused particle transport equation with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of solar flares, we present a macroscopic particle model that naturally incorporates electron acceleration and transport. Our simulation results indicate that physical processes such as turbulent pitch-angle scattering can have important impacts on both electron acceleration in the loop top and transport in the flare loop, and their influences are highly energy-dependent. A spatial-dependent turbulent scattering with enhancement in the loop top can enable both efficient electron acceleration to high energies and transport of abundant electrons to the footpoints. We further generate spatially resolved synthetic hard X-ray (HXR) emission images and spectra, revealing both the loop-top and footpoint HXR sources. Similar to the observations, we show that the footpoint HXR sources are brighter and harder than the loop-top HXR source. We suggest that the macroscopic particle model provides new insights into understanding the connection between the observed loop-top and footpoint nonthermal emission sources by combining the particle model with dynamically evolving MHD simulations of solar flares.
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Detecting non-thermal emission in a solar microflare using nested sampling
Microflares are energetically smaller versions of solar flares, demonstrating the same processes of plasma heating and particle acceleration. However, it remains unclear down to what energy scales this impulsive energy release continues, which has implications for how the solar atmosphere is heated. The heating and particle acceleration in microflares can be studied through their X-ray emission, finding predominantly thermal emission at lower energies; however, at higher energies it can be difficult to distinguish whether the emission is due to hotter plasma and/or accelerated electrons. We present the first application of nested sampling to solar flare X-ray spectra, an approach that provides a quantitative degree of confidence for one model over another. We analyse Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array X-ray observations of a small active region microflare (A0.02 GOES/XRS class equivalent) that occurred on 2021 November 17, with a new python package for spectral fitting, sunkit-spex, to compute the parameter posterior distributions and the evidence of different models representing the higher energy emission as due to thermal or non-thermal sources. Calculating the Bayes factor, we show that there is significantly stronger evidence for the higher energy microflare emission to be produced by non-thermal emission from flare-accelerated electrons than by an additional hot thermal source. Qualitative confirmation of this non-thermal source is provided by the lack of hotter (10 MK) emission in Solar Dynamic Observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly’s extreme ultraviolet data. The nested sampling approach used in this paper has provided clear support for non-thermal emission at the level of 3 × 1024 erg s−1 in this tiny microflare.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10494173
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 529
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 702-714
- Size(s):
- ["p. 702-714"]
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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