A new microwave/X-ray diagnostic for the thermal phase of solar flares

We have observed 10 solar bursts during the thermal phase using the Haystack radio telescope at 22 GHz. We show that these high frequency flux observations, when compared with soft X-ray band fluxes, give useful information about the temperature profile in the flare loops. The microwave and X-ray band fluxes provide determinations of the maximum loop temperature, the total emission measure, and the index δ of the differential emission measure (q(T)/T = cT^δ−1). The special case of an isothermal loop (δ = ∞) has been considered previously by Thomas et al. (1985), and we confirm their diagnostic calculations for the GOES X-ray bands, but find that the flare loops we observed departed significantly from the isothermal regime. Our results (δ = 1-3.5) imply that, during the late phases of flares, condensation cooling (δ ≈ 3.5) competes with radiative cooling (δ ≈ 1.5). Further, our results appear to be in good agreement with previous deductions from XUV rocket spectra (δ ≈ 2-3).