EVE-RHESSI Observations of Thermal and Nonthermal Solar Flare Emission
Abstract
Solar flares accelerate electrons up to hundreds of MeV and heat plasma to tens of MK. In large (GOES M- and X-class) flares, in addition to the 10-25 MK plasma thought to be the result of chromospheric evaporation, even hotter plasma (up to 50 MK) may be directly heated in the corona. While observations of hard X-ray bremmstrahlung directly probe the nonthermal electron population, for large flares the spectra below 20-30 keV are typically dominated by thermal emission. The low energy extent of the nonthermal spectrum can be only loosely quantified by hard X-ray spectrometers, resulting in significant implications for calculating flare energy budgets and for constraining possible acceleration mechanisms. A precise characterization of the thermal emission is imperative. Extreme ultraviolet observations from the EUV Variability Experiment (EVE) on-board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), combined with X-ray data from the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), currently offer the most comprehensive view of the flare temperature distribution. EVE observes EUV emission lines with peak formation temperatures of 2-20 MK, while RHESSI observes the X-ray bremsstrahlung of hot, 10-50 MK plasma; combined, the two instruments cover the full range of flare plasma temperatures. In this work, we handle the EVE-RHESSI data for a few large flares in three steps; first we calculate differential emission measures (DEMs) using EVE and RHESSI independently for purposes of cross-calibration. Second, we create combined EVE-RHESSI DEMs, fixing the nonthermal spectral parameters to those found using a RHESSI-only spectral fit. The final step is to unconstrain the nonthermal parameters (in particular, the low-energy cutoff of the spectrum) and let them be fit in the same process as the EVE-RHESSI DEM, to obtain a fully self-consistent thermal plus nonthermal model. This research is supported by NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator Grant NNX12AH48G.
- Publication:
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AAS/Solar Physics Division Abstracts #44
- Pub Date:
- July 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013SPD....44...55M