Diffusive transport of energetic electrons in the solar corona: X-ray and radio diagnostics
Abstract
Solar flares are associated with efficient particule acceleration. Energetic electrons are diagnosed through X-ray and radio emissions produced as they interact in the solar atmosphere. Particle transport from the acceleration region to the emission sites has a crucial impact on the interpretation of particle emissions in the context of acceleration models, and remains one of the challenging topics in the field of high energy solar physics. In order to address the transport of flare accelerated electrons in the low corona, we used the imaging spectroscopy capabilities of the RHESSI spacecraft to analyze X-ray emissions during the 2004 May 21 flare. We show that non-thermal energetic electrons are trapped in the coronal part of the flaring loop. In the hypothesis of turbulent pitch-angle scattering of energetic electrons (Kontar et al, 2014), diffusive transport of energetic electrons can lead to a confinement of accelerated electrons in the coronal part of the loop. We show that this model can explain the X-ray observations with a scattering mean free path of the order of 108 cm, much smaller than the length of the whole loop. Such results are compared to the observation of the gyrosynchrotron emission of the same flare (Kuznetsov et al, 2015). The diffusive transport model can explain the radio observations with a scattering mean free path of the order or 107 cm. The presented combination of X-ray and radio diagnostics during a flare leads to the first estimate of the energy dependence of the scattering mean free path of energetic electrons in the low corona. This result is comparable with studies of the energy dependence of the scattering mean free path of electrons in the interplanetary medium.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMSH43C..04M
- Keywords:
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- 7514 Energetic particles;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY;
- 7519 Flares;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY;
- 7524 Magnetic fields;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY;
- 7554 X-rays;
- gamma rays;
- and neutrinos;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY