The M5.5 Solar Flare on September 4, 2017 as a Source of Relativistic Electrons and Protons

From RHESSI Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search


Nugget
Number: 373
1st Author: Alexei Struminsky
2nd Author: (see Acknowledgements)
Published: 16 March 2020
Next Nugget: Solar diameter
Previous Nugget: Heating of the solar photosphere during a white-light flare
List all



Introduction

As related in many of these Nuggets, particle acceleration figures prominently in the physics of solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

The relation between the number of accelerated protons and electrons is an important characteristic of these processes. The RHESSI observations are consistent with two (possibly concurrent) acceleration processes: one that accelerates electrons above 50 keV but not above 0.3 MeV (the first phase), and a second that accelerates both ions and electrons proportionally to high energies (the second phase) (Ref. [1]). In order to choose a specific acceleration mechanism suggested for solar flares (see the Table) we need to track electrons of ~10 MeV and protons of ~100 MeV. From the table it is clear that any acceleration mechanism may operate during the first phase, but we have only two possibilities for the second phase.

373f0.png

References

[1] Shih 2009

Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox