Energetics in Two-ribbon Flares
Abstract
We conduct a semi-quantitative analysis of two-ribbon flares to relate the pattern of magnetic reconnection and energetics during the flare. We establish a correlation between UV emission and >30 keV hard X-ray emission, so that evolution of the flare morphology illustrated in high resolution UV images is used to infer non-thermal particle precipitation. In the few two-ribbon flares under investigation, the flare UV ribbons exhibit apparent motion both parallel with and perpendicular to the magnetic polarity inversion line of the active region. We note that the perpendicular spread of the UV ribbon dominates the peak phase of hard X-rays, when the parallel motion is nearly halted. With a local 2.5D assumption, we decompose the magnetic reconnection rate into two parts ψ|| and ψperp, ψ|| being related to the parallel expansion of the UV ribbon, and ψperp being related to the perpendicular expansion of the UV ribbon. It is found that non-thermal energy release is strongly correlated with ψperp. We explore an empirical scaling law between non-thermal energy release and the pattern of magnetic reconnection. This work is supported by the NSF grant ATM-0748428, NASA grant NNX08AE44G, and NSF REU grant ATM-0552958.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #216
- Pub Date:
- May 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AAS...21632101Q