Chromospheric evidence for magnetic reconnection in a two-ribbon flare.
Abstract
The authors study a two-ribbon flare, observed with both ground and satellite-based instruments. The most important result of their study is given by the measure of the chromospheric downflows within several flaring kernels, heated by a conduction front from the corona. In all the cases examined, they find a stronger downflow at the outer edge of the flaring ribbon, on a region only a few arcsec across. They think that these observations provide a clear evidence of magnetic reconnection. As explicitly show in recent flare models that consider heat conduction from the reconnecting site, the conduction front directly maps only the outer boundary magnetic field lines of the reconnecting loops. Its effect on the chromospheric layers would be to compress the plasma, triggering downflows only on the outer edge on the ribbons, consistently with the authors' observations.
- Publication:
-
JOSO Annu. Rep., 1997
- Pub Date:
- 1998
- Bibcode:
- 1998joso.proc..149F
- Keywords:
-
- Solar Flares: Solar Chromosphere