Electron Acceleration By Inertial Alfven Waves In The Impulsive Phase Of A Solar Flare

Details Electron Acceleration By Inertial Alfven Waves In The Impulsive Phase Of A Solar Flare Electron Acceleration By Inertial Alfven Waves In The Impulsive Phase Of A Solar Flare

May 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.9303h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #93.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.211

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The impulsive phase of a solar flare marks the epoch of rapid conversion of energy stored in the pre-flare coronal magnetic field. Hard X-ray observations imply that a substantial fraction of flare energy released during the impulsive phase is converted to the kinetic energy of mildly relativistic electrons (10-100 keV). The liberation of the magnetic free energy occurs as the coronal magnetic field reconfigures and relaxes following reconnection. Therefore, we investigate a scenario in which the electron acceleration is caused by the agents of this reconfiguration -- the large-scale Alfven waves which propagate the field changes throughout the atmosphere. In a plasma with β < me/mp, these waves propagate as inertial Alfven waves which, in the presence of strong spatial gradients, generate field-aligned electric fields that can accelerate electrons to energies on the order of 10 keV and above. This novel view also provides an interpretation of the recently-observed rapid variations of the line-of-sight component of the photospheric magnetic field during the flare impulsive phase, and offers solutions to some perplexing flare problems, such as the flare “number problem” of finding sufficient and resupplying sufficient electrons to explain the impulsive-phase hard X-ray emission.

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