V. F. Melnikov

Spectral Flattening During Solar Radio Bursts At Cm–mm Wavelengths and the Dynamics of Energetic Electrons in a Flare Loop

Until recently, most of the information on particle acceleration processes in solar flares has been obtained from hard X-ray and cm-microwave observations. As a rule they provide information on electrons with energies below 300 keV. During recent years it became possible to measure the gamma-ray and millimeter radio emission with improved sensitivities. These spectral ranges carry information on much higher energy electrons. We studied the temporal and spectral behaviour of the radio burst emission at centimeter-millimeter wavelengths (8–50 GHz) by using the data from the patrol instruments of IAP (Bern University). We have analyzed more than 20 impulsive and long duration radio bursts (of 10 s to several 100 s duration).The main finding of the data analysis is the presence of spectral flattening throughout the bursts, which occurs always during the decay phase of flux peaks, at frequencies well above the spectral peak frequency and independently of burst duration. Furthermore, for some of the bursts, the flux maxima at higher frequencies are delayed. These findings can serve as evidence of the hardening of the electron spectrum at energies above some hundreds of keV during the decay phase of cm–mm flux peaks. As a most likely reason for such a hardening we consider Coulomb collisions of energetic electrons continuously injected and trapped in a flaring loop.

Electromagnetic and corpuscular emission from the solar flare of 1991 June 15: Continuous acceleraton of relativistic particles

Data on X-,γ-ray, optical and radio emission from the 1991 June 15 solar flare are considered. We have calculated the spectrum of protons that producesγ-rays during the gradual phase of the flare. The primary proton spectrum can be described as a Bessel-function-type up to 0.8 GeV and a power law with the spectral index ≈3 from 0.8 up to 10 GeV or above. We have also analyzed data on energetic particles near the Earth. Their spectrum differed from that of primary protons producingγ-ray line emission. In the gradual phase of the flare additional pulses of energy release occurred and the time profiles of cm-radio emission andγ-rays in the 0.8–10 MeV energy band and above 50 MeV coincided. A continuous and simultaneous stochastic acceleration of the protons and relativistic electrons at the gradual phase of the flare is considered as a natural explanation of the data.

Dynamics of the Flaring Loop System of 2005 August 22 Observed in Microwaves and Hard X-rays

We studied the spatial dynamics of the flaring loop in the 2005 August 22 event using microwave (NoRH) and hard X-ray (RHESSI) observations together with complementary data from SOHO/MDI, SMART at Hida, SOHO/EIT, and TRACE. We have found that (1) the pre-flare morphology of the active region exhibits a strongly sheared arcade seen in Hα and the J-shape filament seen in EUV; (2) energy release and high-energy electron acceleration occur in a sequence along the extensive arcade; (3) the shear angle and the parallel (to the magnetic neutral line) component of the footpoint (FP) distance steadily decrease during the flare process; (4) the radio loop shrinks in length and height during the first emission peak, and later it grows; after the fourth peak the simultaneous descending of the brightest loop and formation of a new microwave loop at a higher altitude occur; (5) the hard X-ray coronal source is located higher than the microwave loop apex and shows faster upward motion; (6) the first peak on microwave time profiles is present in both the loop top and FP regions. However, the emission peaks that follow are present only in the FP regions. We conclude that after the first emission peak the acceleration site is located over the flaring arcade and particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines. We make use of the collapsing magnetic trap model to understand some observational effects.

Thermal Fronts in Flaring Magnetic Loops

We examine the existence of thermal fronts in solar flaring magnetic loops. In the past, two opposite conclusions have been made from the analysis of the evolution of a system in which hot electrons are injected into a coronal magnetic loop. One, made on the basis of analytical solutions, claims that this leads to the formation of ion-acoustic turbulence and subsequently a thermal front develops, while the opposing view obtained later on the basis of detailed numerical modeling shows no evidence of thermal fronts. In our study a one dimensional Vlasov solver is implemented to solve the distribution functions for each particle species f(a)(r, v, t). The numerical simulations are electrostatic since we examine motions along the field lines only. The results presented here show that earlier numerical results only showed the absence of thermal fronts because of the restricted size of the initial hot-electron region. If larger hot regions are simulated then thermal fronts do indeed form. This dependence on the system size is also explained. These results therefore confirm some of the theory presented by Levin and Melnikov and Brown et al. (i.e., the hot electrons are confined). The net effect of thermal fronts is that the electron energy is confined (m(i)/m(e))(1/2) times longer than the estimate based on the free streaming of hot electrons.

Quasi-linear model for the plasma mechanism of narrow-band microwave burst generation

Characteristic features of the plasma model for radio emission from the extending fronts of solar flare energy release are studied. It is shown that the electron distribution is formed near the thermal fronts as stationary beam injection through the boundary into the cold plasma semi-space. A principal new result is a conclusion about the localization of a plasma turbulence region — the source of emission in a narrow layer before the thermal front, that makes it possible to explain the burst narrow-band feature in a natural way. Wide capabilities of the flare loop structure analysis using the narrow-band emission parameters are demonstrated.

Solar energetic particle events from solar flares with weak impulsive phases of microwave emission

In some solar energetic particle events relatively intense proton fluxes are accompanied by disproportionately weak intensity ofμ-burst. A possible reason for such a situation is discussed in this paper. We use the idea that the dynamics of particles in flare loops strongly influences the efficiency of their escape into interplanetary space. It is proposed that in events with weak impulsive phase flare loops are large sized and stretched high into the corona, the magnetic field is weak, and the level of excited turbulence is rather low. All this leads to the weak diffusion of protons into the loss cone, a large lifetime of a particle in the loop (≈ 103 s) and, hence, to the relatively high efficiency of their escape into interplanetary space.