Global energetics of solar flares. III. Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Aschwanden M.J.
  2. Holman G.
  3. O'Flannagain A.
  4. Caspi A.
  5. McTiernan J.M.,Kontar E.P.
  6. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

This study entails the third part of a global flare energetics project, in which Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) data of 191 M and X-class flare events from the first 3.5yrs of the Solar Dynamics Observatory mission are analyzed. We fit a thermal and a nonthermal component to RHESSI spectra, yielding the temperature of the differential emission measure (DEM) tail, the nonthermal power-law slope and flux, and the thermal/nonthermal cross-over energy e_co_. From these parameters, we calculate the total nonthermal energy E_nt_ in electrons with two different methods: (1) using the observed cross-over energy e_co_ as low-energy cutoff, and (2) using the low-energy cutoff e_wt_ predicted by the warm thick-target bremsstrahlung model of Kontar et al. Based on a mean temperature of T_e_=8.6MK in active regions, we find low-energy cutoff energies of e_wt_=6.2+/-1.6keV for the warm-target model, which is significantly lower than the cross-over energies e_co_=21+/-6keV. Comparing with the statistics of magnetically dissipated energies E_mag_ and thermal energies E_th_ from the two previous studies, we find the following mean (logarithmic) energy ratios with the warm-target model: E_nt_=0.41E_mag_, E_th_=0.08E_mag_, and E_th_=0.15E_nt_. The total dissipated magnetic energy exceeds the thermal energy in 95% and the nonthermal energy in 71% of the flare events, which confirms that magnetic reconnection processes are sufficient to explain flare energies. The nonthermal energy exceeds the thermal energy in 85% of the events, which largely confirms the warm thick-target model.

Keywords
  1. the-sun
  2. stellar-flares
  3. astronomical-models
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2016ApJ...832...27A
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/832/27
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/832/27
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18320027

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/832/27
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/832/27
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/832/27
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).

History

2017-03-07T10:56:14Z
Resource record created
2017-03-07T10:56:14Z
Created
2017-04-05T14:23:18Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr