Flare electron energy budgets - what is RHESSI telling us?

Details Flare electron energy budgets - what is RHESSI telling us? Flare electron energy budgets - what is RHESSI telling us?

Dec 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002esasp.506..253b&link_type=abstract

In: Solar variability: from core to outer frontiers. The 10th European Solar Physics Meeting, 9 - 14 September 2002, Prague, Cze

Physics

Hard X-Rays, Electron, Flare, Acceleration

Scientific paper

We address the idea that energetic particles may play a key role in the dissipation and transport of energy in flares. After three decades of predictions of spatial, spectral and temporal distributions of hard X- and γ-rays, the various models can now be quantitatively tested against RHESSI high resolution spectral imaging data. It is shown that RHESSI results for a number of HXR flares are in very good agreement with predictions of the basic thick target model (Brown 1971) regarding source height as a function of energy and of global HXR spectrum. A single power-law injection spectrum and purely collisional transport (no wave generation) fit well the decrease of source peak height with increasing energy for very plausible chromospheric density structures. When the target ionisation drop across the transition one is included, the global HXR spectrum agrees well with observed "knee" spectra without any feature added to a scale-less power-law electron injection spectrum. This result favours statistically distributed, as opposed to single large scale, E-field acceleration. Whether energetic electron beams actually dominate flare energy transport still depends on accurate inference of the low energy thermal/nonthermal spectral transition though RHESSI results to date support the idea. The ion energy budget is also briefly mentioned.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Flare electron energy budgets - what is RHESSI telling us? does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Flare electron energy budgets - what is RHESSI telling us?, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Flare electron energy budgets - what is RHESSI telling us? will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-963759