Dips and Waves
From RHESSI Wiki
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== Introduction == | == Introduction == | ||
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| + | There has been some heated discussion as to whether the "dip" seen in the mean electron spectrum derived from RHESSI flare observations is a real feature as it can often be removed be correcting for albedo. But for flares with relatively low thermal mission the standard "thick-target" interpretation says that the "dip" must be there. This model only accounts for Coulomb collisions between the propagating beam of accelerated electrons and the background plasma. In this nugget we present simulation results from our recent paper, where we show what happens to the dip when you also include wave-particle interactions between the beam and background plasma. | ||
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| + | == Wave-partilce Interactions == | ||
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| + | This is because this model, in which the accelerated electron beam propagates to the chromosphere only having Coulomb collisions with the background plasma | ||
Revision as of 12:41, 19 November 2009
Introduction
There has been some heated discussion as to whether the "dip" seen in the mean electron spectrum derived from RHESSI flare observations is a real feature as it can often be removed be correcting for albedo. But for flares with relatively low thermal mission the standard "thick-target" interpretation says that the "dip" must be there. This model only accounts for Coulomb collisions between the propagating beam of accelerated electrons and the background plasma. In this nugget we present simulation results from our recent paper, where we show what happens to the dip when you also include wave-particle interactions between the beam and background plasma.
Wave-partilce Interactions
This is because this model, in which the accelerated electron beam propagates to the chromosphere only having Coulomb collisions with the background plasma
The standard interpretation of RHESSI's hard x-ray emission is of electrons accelerated in the corona that propgated down to the chromosphere, colliding with the background plasma and eventually stopping.
Conclusions
The work shown here is a step towards a more complete treatment of electron transport in solar flares and highlights that the inclusion of wave-particle interactions flattens sharp low energy cutoffs in the inital accelerated electron distribution.
