X-ray observations of recurrence of eruptive flares and active regions

In a study of soft X-ray coronal images obtained with the Yohkoh spacecraft, two eruptive flares with remarkably similar X-ray structures were noted – most remarkably because the flares occurred at the same solar location (approximately 10 deg north latitude on the east limb) yet separated in time by three solar rotations. Between the times of the eruptions, the active region responsible for the first flare disappeared from Yohkoh images. An extremely similar X-ray active region replaced it by the third solar rotation. The recurring X-ray active region appearance and recurring flare activity after 86 days suggest that persistent subsurface flux emergence patterns might be responsible, and support previous arguments that active longitudes exist.     

Classification of magnetic reconnection during two current-loop coalescence

We present a classification of magnetic reconnection during two current loop coalescence, which may be quite important for the physical process of both solar flares and coronal loop heating in the solar active region. It is suggested that different kinds of the current loop coalescence processes could be identified from the soft X-ray telescope(SXT) of the Yohkoh satellite and the magnetic field data in the active region.     

On the Solar Origins of Intense Geomagnetic Storms Observed During 6–11 March 1993

Intense geomagnetic storms with DST index -100 nT were recorded on 9 March and 11 March 1993 associated with solar activity on 6 March and 9-10 March, respectively. In this paper, we discuss the characteristic features of the solar origins of the two events that gave rise to coronal and interplanetary disturbances and as a consequence produced strong geomagnetic activity at the Earth. The source of the activity in one case is attributed to a major 3M7.0 flare that occurred on 6 March 1993 and in the other case, to two large filament disruptions on the disk during 9-10 March, 1993. Both these sources were found to be located near changing or varying low-latitude coronal holes. They were also located close to the heliospheric currents sheets. Distinct X-ray activity was observed for both the events as observed by the Yohkoh SXT telescope. The detailed evolution and a comparison of these events on the basis of Yohkoh soft X-ray observations are presented here.     

Spectral Analysis of a Thermal Flare on 27 October 1993

A thermal subflare occurring on 27 October 1993 was observed during a multi-wavelength campaign with the Yohkoh spacecraft and the Multi-channel Subtractive Double-Pass spectrograph (MSDP) at Pic du Midi. The various instruments provided us with 2-D H spectra, X-ray spectra and X-ray images. A non-LTE computation (including chromospheric condensation) was carried out to determine the dynamic parameters of the flaring chromosphere. By combining these results with the Yohkoh data, we illustrate that momentum is balanced between the upflowing plasma and the downflowing cool plasma during the flare. This result is consistent with the evaporation model.     

Evidence of Magnetic Reconnection in Solar Flares and a Unified Model of Flares

The solar X-ray observing satellite Yohkoh has discovered various new dynamic features in solar flares and corona, e.g., cusp-shaped flare loops, above-the-loop-top hard X-ray sources, X-ray plasmoid ejections from impulsive flares, transient brightenings (spatially resolved microflares), X-ray jets, large scale arcade formation associated with filament eruption or coronal mass ejections, and so on. It has soon become clear that many of these features are closely related to magnetic reconnection. We can now say that Yohkoh established (at least phenomenologically) the magnetic reconnection model of flares. In this paper, we review various evidence of magnetic reconnection in solar flares and corona, and present unified model of flares on the basis of these new Yohkoh observations. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Spatial Structure of Solar Coronal Magnetic Loops Revealed by Transient Microwave Brightenings

We present the measurement of magnetic field gradient in magnetic loops in the solar corona, based on the multi-wavelength Very Large Array observations of two transient microwave brightenings (TMBs) in the solar active region 7135. The events were observed at 2 cm (spatial resolution 2=) and 3.6 cm (spatial resolution 3=) with a temporal resolution of 3.3 s in a time-sharing mode. Soft X-ray data (spatial resolution 2.5=) were available from the Soft X-ray Telescope on board the Yohkoh satellite. The three-dimensional structure of simple magnetic loops, where the transient brightenings occurred, were traced out by these observations. The 2-cm and 3.6-cm sources were very compact, located near the footpoint of the magnetic loops seen in the X-ray images. For the two events reported in this paper, the projected angular separation between the centroids of 2 and 3.6-cm sources is about 2.3= and 3.1=, respectively. We interpret that the 2 and 3.6-cm sources come from thermal gyro-resonance emission. The 2-cm emission is at the 3rd harmonic originating from the gyro-resonance layer where the magnetic field is 1800 G. The 3.6-cm emission is at the 2nd harmonic, originating from the gyro-resonance layer with a magnetic field of 1500 G. The estimated magnetic field gradient near the footpoint of the magnetic loop is about 0.09 G km=¹ and 0.12 G km=¹ for the two events. These values are smaller than those observed in the photosphere and chromosphere by at least a factor of 2.     

Using Strong Solar Coronal Emission Lines as Coronal Flux Proxies

We investigate the possibility that strong EUV lines observed with the Goddard Solar EUV Rocket Telescope and Spectrograph (SERTS) provide good proxies for estimating the total coronal flux over shorter wavelength ranges. We use coordinated SERTS and Yohkoh observations to obtain both polynomial and power-law fits relating the broad-band soft X-ray fluxes to the intensities of Fexvi 335 Ú and 361 Ú, Fexv 284 Ú and 417 Ú, and Mgix 368 Ú measured with SERTS. We found that the power-law fits best cover the full range of solar conditions from quiet Sun through active region, though not surprisingly the cooler Mgix 368 Ú line proves to be a poor proxy. The quadratic polynomial fits yield fair agreement over a large range for all but the Mgix line. However, the linear fits fail conspicuously when extrapolated into the quiet-Sun regime. The implications of this work for the Heii 304 Ú line formation problem are also briefly considered.     

FLUX EMERGENCE AND PROMINENCES: A NEW SCENARIO FOR 3-DIMENSIONAL FIELD GEOMETRY BASED ON OBSERVATIONS WITH THE ADVANCED STOKES POLARIMETER

This paper presents an interpretation of the evolution of the vector magnetic field at the photosphere based on measurements of the advanced Stokes polarimeter, along with chromospheric H from the Lockheed instrument operating on La Palma and X-ray images of the corona from Yohkoh. These measurements are consistent with the emergence of a nearly closed magnetic structure from the solar interior into the corona. The highly non-potential field topology inferred from the data suggests that strong field-aligned currents exist in the emergent magnetic structure as it buoyantly rises through the photosphere. Material trapped in this closed structure is pulled upward to later condense into a prominence. By analogy of this small active region evolution with the observed properties of large quiescent prominences, we speculate that this process might also be operative on a much larger scale. A 3-dimensional magnetostatic model is presented which has many topological features in common with the observations.     

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL CORONAL MAGNETIC FIELD

Studies of solar flares indicate that the mechanism of flares is magnetic in character and that the coronal magnetic field is a key to understanding solar high-energy phenomena. In our ongoing research we are conducting a systematic study of a large database of observations which includes both coronal structure (from the Soft X-ray Telescope on the Yohkoh spacecraft) and photospheric vector magnetic fields (from the Haleakala Stokes Polarimeter at Mees Solar Observatory). We compare the three-dimensional nonlinear force-free coronal magnetic field, computed from photospheric boundary data, to images of coronal structure. In this paper we outline our techniques and present results for active region AR 7220/7222. We show that the computed force-free coronal magnetic field agrees well with Yohkoh X-ray coronal loops, and we discuss the properties of the coronal magnetic field and the soft X-ray loops.     

Soft X-Ray Pre-Flare Emission Studied in Yohkoh-SXT Images

The goal of this study is to improve our knowledge of the spatial relation between pre-flare and flare X-ray sources, to find other connections between the two phenomena (if they exist) and to study the role of pre-flare heating in flare build-up. We selected all flares with available preflare data observed by Yohkoh during the period October 1993–October 1994 and thus created a data base of 32 flares. When studying the spatial relation we discovered that our events can be classified into 3 categories: Co-spatial, Adjacent/Overlapping and Distant according to the spatial separation between the pre-flare and flare source(s) in the same field of view. The 'Co-spatial class of events, of which we found 8 cases, refers to flares that had a visible pre-flare soft X-ray structure with the same size, shape, and orientation as the main flare loops at the flare site at least 5 min before the start of the impulsive phase. We suggest that this is strong evidence that for a significant number of flares the flare structure is active in soft X-rays several minutes or more before the flare begins. However, an analysis of the physical properties of the flare sites, including temperature and intensity variation found no consistent feature distinguishable from other non-flaring active region emission and hence no definite evidence of a special 'pre-flare or 'precursor phase in solar flares.     

Our New View of the Solar Corona from Yohkoh and Soho

The Yohkoh satellite has now been orbiting the Earth for about 6 years and during this time it has revealed a number of new features in the solar corona. These include the discovery of X-ray jets and active region transient brightenings, as well as observations of hard X-ray sources above and at the feet of soft X-ray flare loops. SOHO, the newest solar space mission, is not orbiting the Earth, but is in fact orbiting the Sun and has been at the Earth's L1 point for about 2 years. During this time it too has identified some new and interesting characteristics of both the solar corona, the photosphere and the solar interior. For example, studies of high resolution MDI/SOHO magnetograms indicate that the magnetic carpet may play an important role in the heating of the coronal. Also polar plume studies from EIT/SOHO data suggest that they may be a possible source for the fast solar wind. Together these two missions have dominated solar research throughout the 90s and are expected to continue to do so during the rise from solar minimum to the next solar maximum. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

VERY LARGE ARRAY OBSERVATIONS OF EVOLVING NOISE STORM SOURCES ON THE SUN

The presence of coronal magnetic fields connecting active regions is inferred from decimetric observations of solar noise storms with the Very Large Array (VLA) and from soft X-ray images taken by Yohkoh. Temporal changes in the noise storms appear to be correlated with some soft X-ray bursts detected by both Yohkoh and the GOES satellite. Combined analysis of the radio and X-ray data suggests a re-arrangement of the coronal magnetic field during the onset of impulsive noise storm burst emission. On one day during the combined VLA–Yohkoh–GOES observations, two widely-separated active regions appear to be connected by a faint trans-equatorial 91 cm source as well as two distinct soft X-ray loops. The two active regions show anti-correlated fluctuations in decimetric radio emission. On another day of combined VLA–Yohkoh observations, a series of 91 cm noise storm bursts are observed along the major axis of the associated noise storm continuum. Time sequences of Yohkoh soft X-ray images show a contraction of coronal loops prior to the onset of this series of bursts and a corresponding increase in the X-ray flux in the apparent footpoint of the overarching loop containing the noise storm. These observations imply that energy from a realignment of the magnetic field is being transferred, possibly by accelerated particles, along loops connecting separated active regions on the Sun.     

太阳耀斑研究的新进展(英)

近年来对太阳耀斑的研究取得了重要的进展。一些新的发现主要来自高分辨率的观测，特别是来自"阳光"卫星的结果。综述的范围包括太阳耀斑中磁重联的新证据、硬X射线源（包括所谓的超热源）的分类、X射线喷流的发现、环－环相互作用的证据以及对耀斑大气动力学过程的新认识等。基于这些新的知识，讨论了有关耀斑模型的一些问题。     

On two distinct shocks during the flare of 9 July 1996

Due to the emission of shock-accelerated electrons, broadband radio observations display propagating super Alfvénic shock waves in the low corona ('type II bursts'). We study the 9 July 1996 flare (AR NOAA 7978) focusing on the aspect of shock generation. This event's radio spectrogram shows two different type II bursts in sequence. Radio imaging data (Paris, Meudon Observatory) reveal that both bursts appear at different sites above the H flare. The driver of the first type II burst seems to propagate with twice the speed of the second one. The projected source site of the first type II burst (seen earlier and at higher frequencies) is spatially situated further away from the H flare site than the source of the second type II burst. We try to understand this by comparing with Yohkoh soft X-ray images. The first shock source occurs near the top of high soft X-ray loop structures. Its driver can be a guided fast mode magnetic disturbance. The second type II source appears in-between two high soft X-ray loop systems. This might be a piston-driven disturbance powered by an evaporation front. We get a consistent picture only by assuming a very inhomogeneous Alfvén speed in the active region's atmosphere.     

Filament Disappearances During the Period of September 1991 through September 1994

Continuous full-disk H images recorded by the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) from 1 September 1991 to 19 September 1994 (the first three years of Yohkoh mission) were digitized and analyzed. The data set consists of nearly 10000 H images, one every half hour for the period when the BBSO was observing. Two statistical studies of the disappearing solar filaments based on this set of data are made: (1) The disk latitude distribution of all larger disappearing filaments with a minimum length of 70 arc sec, including the time of their disappearance. Of the 1095 such filaments, 439 disappeared during our continuous observations, 314 disappeared during the BBSO night gap, 162 disappeared during data gap (more than 94 hours) and 180 rotated beyond the west limb. If we plot latitudes as a function of time for all these disappeared filaments, it shows a uniform distribution in latitude. However, if we plot the distribution of larger disappeared filaments (200 arc sec or above), then the butterfly trend appears – position of filaments tends to drift to lower latitude as solar activity decreases. (2) The disk distribution of all detectable disappearing filaments, large and small, for the 9-months period, January 1994 to September 1994. We find that the size distribution of 351 collected disappeared filaments follows a power law with a power index of –1.40.     

Generalized Regularization Techniques with Constraints for the Analysis of Solar Bremsstrahlung X-ray Spectra

Hard X-ray spectra in solar flares provide knowledge of the electron spectrum that results from acceleration and propagation in the solar atmosphere. However, the inference of the electron spectra from solar X-ray spectra is an ill-posed inverse problem. Here, we develop and apply an enhanced regularization algorithm for this process making use of physical constraints on the form of the electron spectrum. The algorithm incorporates various features not heretofore employed in the solar flare context: Generalized Singular Value Decomposition (GSVD) to deal with different orders of constraints; rectangular form of the cross-section matrix to extend the solution energy range; regularization with various forms of the smoothing operator; and preconditioning of the problem. We show by simulations that this technique yields electron spectra with considerably more information and higher quality than previous algorithms.     

Directivity of non-thermal X-ray emission from solar flares

An attempt has been made in the present work to reveal the directivity of solar non-thermal X-ray emission using the data obtained from the Prognoz and Explorer satellites. The frequency of occurrence of X-ray bursts and the mean intensities of the emission are studied as a function of distance from the central meridian. The most complete statistics have been obtained for the 4–24 keV X-ray bursts for the period 1970–1973. The X-ray burst frequency of occurrence normalized to the corresponding H flare frequency increases towards the solar limb. During the studied period this trend is more pronounced to the east than to the west. Distributions of the mean intensities of X-ray bursts are very similar to those of the frequency of occurrence of X-ray bursts; the effect is more noticeable for the low intensity bursts. The effect of the east-west asymmetry for H flares has been found to vary in magnitude and direction during the 20th solar activity cycle.     

The emission and propagation of ∼ 40keV solar flare electrons

Observations of prompt 40 keV solar flare electron events by the IMP series of satellites in the period August, 1966 to December, 1967 are tabulated along with prompt energetic solar proton events in the period 1964–1967. The interrelationship of the various types of energetic particle emission by the sun, including relativistic energy electrons reported by Cline and McDonald (1968) are investigated. Relativistic energy electron emission is found to occur only during proton events. The solar optical, radio and X-ray emission associated with these various energetic particle emissions as well as the propagation characteristics of each particle species are examined in order to study the particle acceleration and emission mechanisms in a solar flare. Evidence is presented for two separate particle acceleration and/or emission mechanisms, one of which produces 40 keV electrons and the other of which produces solar proton and possibly relativistic energy electrons. It is found that solar flares can be divided into three categories depending on their energetic particle emission: (1) small flares with no accompanying energetic phenomena either in particles, radio or X-ray emission; (2) small flares which produce low energy electrons and which are accompanied by type III and microwave radio bursts and energetic ( 20 keV) X-ray bursts; and (3) major solar flare eruptions characterized by energetic solar proton production and type II and IV radio bursts and accompanied by intense microwave and X-ray emission and relativistic energy electrons.     

Arch Filament Systems Associated with X-Ray Loops

Using multi-wavelength observations obtained with the Tenerife telescopes (VTT and GCT) and with the Yohkoh satellite, we observed new emerging flux with an associated arch filament system (AFS) in the chromosphere and bright X-ray loops in the corona. We observed the change of connectivity of the X-ray loop footpoints which may be at the origin of the occurrence of a subflare. Densities, gas and magnetic pressures of cold AFS and hot loops were derived and discussed. The extrapolation of the photospheric magnetic field observed with the GCT in a linear force-free field assumption (constant ) shows that this region, in spite of having roughly a global potential configuration, consists of two systems of arch filaments. We found these two systems best fitted with two sheared magnetic topologies of opposite values of ± 0.1 Mm^-1     

Multiwavelength Observations of the 5 January 1992 Flare

The 5 January 1992 flare around 13:16 UT was observed in H, H, and Ca ii H with the imaging spectrographs at Locarno-Monti, Switzerland and in soft and hard X-rays by the Yohkoh satellite. In this paper we discuss the analysis of the temporal and spatial evolution of this flare well observed at chromospheric and coronal layers. We find that the strongest footpoint emission in the optical lines does not coincide with the sites of non-thermal electron injection and show that these footpoints are mainly heated by thermal conduction. The chromospheric electron density, determined from the H line profiles, shows several temporally well correlated rises with the hard X-ray intensity at the electron injection sites. Two of the flare loops clearly are associated with strong chromospheric evaporation, while very weak evaporation is observed in the loop with the strongest footpoint emission in the optical lines.