Suzaku/WAM and RHESSI observation of non-thermal electrons in solar microflares

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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[7519] Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy / Flares, [7554] Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy / X-Rays, Gamma Rays, And Neutrinos

Scientific paper

We report on hard X-ray spectroscopy of solar microflares observed by the Wide-band All-sky Monitor (WAM), onboard the Suzaku satellite, and by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). WAM transient data provide wide energy band (50 keV - 5 MeV) spectrum over a large field of view (~2π str) with a time resolution of 1 s. While WAM was mainly designed for gamma-ray bursts and other bursts of hard X-ray and gamma-ray from transient non-solar objects, it is also attractive as a hard X-ray solar flare monitor thanks to its large effective area (~800 cm2 at 100 keV, ~13 times larger than that of RHESSI). Hard X-ray (>50 keV) emissions from 17 GOES B-class flares were detected by WAM by Febrary 2010, and 7 of them were also observed by RHESSI. The GOES classes of these events range from B1.3 to B9.5, and the RHESSI non-thermal spectra are well-fit by power-laws with photon spectral indices between 3 and 5. The durations of both the WAM and RHESSI non-thermal emissions are ~1 minute, and the detected WAM fluxes are more than ~20 times smaller than RHESSI backgrounds at energies above ~100 keV. The WAM spectra show the high-energy extension of the non-thermal power-law distribution seen by RHESSI, showing that microflares, similar to regular flares, accelerate electrons to energies above 50 keV. We discuss high-energy (>50 keV) particle acceleration in solar microflares and its relation to large flares.

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