Understanding the Where and the How Big of Solar Flares
Abstract
The approach to understanding solar flares generally characterizes global properties of a solar active region, for example the total magnetic flux, the total free magnetic energy, or the total length of a sheared magnetic neutral line. We take here a different tack, characterizing not the region as a whole, but estimating the energy-release prospects of different sub-regions within the region. We have considered two active regions (NOAA ARs 11283 and 11793) which are similar in their overall size and classification, but produced radically different distributions of flares, with AR 11793 producing nothing larger than C-flares while AR 11283 produced a sequence of M and X-flares, with very few smaller flares. We modeled the coronal magnetic field using the CFITS non-linear force-free extrapolation code, and identified individual current systems within the the extrapolation whose energy might be released in a single reconnection event. We present here results comparing the energy associated with the individual current systems with the magnitude of the flares originating from each region.
This material is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1630454. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.- Publication:
-
Solar Heliospheric and INterplanetary Environment (SHINE 2019)
- Pub Date:
- May 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019shin.confE.141B