Heating of the solar flare plasma by high energy electrons

Heating of the ambient plasma by high energy electrons in solar flares is discussed. It is shown that for large flares the heating is enough to produce a thermal plasma of a temperature up to a few times of 10⁷K rapidly in the initial phase of the flares. Thus thermal bremsstrahlung in addition to non-thermal bremsstrahlung should be considered for the X-ray emission of solar flares in the initial phase.NAS-NRC Resident Research Associate.