Heating of Flare Loops with Observationally Constrained Heating Functions
Abstract
We analyze high-cadence high-resolution observations of a C3.2 flare obtained by AIA/SDO on 2010 August 1. The flare is a long-duration event with soft X-ray and EUV radiation lasting for over 4 hr. Analysis suggests that magnetic reconnection and formation of new loops continue for more than 2 hr. Furthermore, the UV 1600 Å observations show that each of the individual pixels at the feet of flare loops is brightened instantaneously with a timescale of a few minutes, and decays over a much longer timescale of more than 30 minutes. We use these spatially resolved UV light curves during the rise phase to construct empirical heating functions for individual flare loops, and model heating of coronal plasmas in these loops. The total coronal radiation of these flare loops are compared with soft X-ray and EUV radiation fluxes measured by GOES and AIA. This study presents a method to observationally infer heating functions in numerous flare loops that are formed and heated sequentially by reconnection throughout the flare, and provides a very useful constraint to coronal heating models.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- June 2012
- DOI:
- 10.1088/0004-637X/752/2/124
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1201.0973
- Bibcode:
- 2012ApJ...752..124Q
- Keywords:
-
- magnetic fields;
- magnetic reconnection;
- Sun: activity;
- Sun: flares;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- This paper is revised