Note on solar hard X-ray bursts

Observationally solar X bursts fall into three different categories : soft X bursts (E < 10 keV), deka-keV bursts (10–150 keV), and very hard X bursts or deci-MeV bursts (200–1000 keV). The first kind is quasi-thermal, the last kind is non-thermal. The real existence of the third kind of burst looks probable but has not yet been proved by direct observations. The difference between deci-MeV and deka-keV bursts may mainly be a matter of geometry of the emitting plasma.     

The empirical determination of line source functions, β L -values,and the microturbulent and convective velocity components as functions of depth in the photosphere-chromosphere transition region

An empirical method for determining line source functions, previously applied by us to the cores of infrared lines has now been extended to the whole line profile and was applied to centre-limb observations of sixteen lines of five infrared multiplets, mainly of high excitation potential (Table I). The present investigation was performed in two steps. In the first part of the paper approximate values are derived for the depth dependence of the four functions named in the title of this paper, where _L is the ratio between the actual and the LTE population of the lower level of the transitions involved. In the second part of the paper we use these empirically derived functions to compute the line profiles. From the remaining differences between observed and computed profiles, corrections are derived to the four functions. The main results are: (a) Convective velocities: see Table IV.(b)(Micro-)turbulent velocities: see Figure 8. Between ₅ = 10^-4 and 10^-1: 1.4 km s^-1, which is an upper limit since an unknown contribution of macroscopic motions could not be separated, (c) Line source functions: see Figures 9, 15 and 16. The source functions are close to the black-body function for ₅ 10^-3, slight deviations occur in higher levels. The interesting behaviour of the Caii source function near ₅ = 10^-5 should be noted. (d) Non LTE-functions: first approximations for the functions log _L ( ₅) were derived empirically in the first part, and are shown in Figure 10; the second approximation shows them to be too large and the real values seem to be closer to one-half or one-third of these functions.     

A systematic method for the analysis of high-resolution fraunhofer line profiles

A fraunhofer line profile depends on various parameters, partly related to the photospheric structure (T, P _g, P _e, v _conv, v _turb), partly to the atom or ion involved (such as oscillator strength, energy levels), partly also resulting from the interaction of the relevant kind of particles with the photosphere, and the photospheric radiation field. In this paper we shall mainly pay attention to the determination of: the macroturbulent (convective) velocities, v _conv (); the damping constant (); the abundance, A _el; the distribution function (v _conv, ) of the convective velocities at each depth ; the source function, S (); the microturbulent velocities, v _turb ().The particular difficulty with these unknowns is that they are, as a rule, coupled in the resulting line profiles, that is: the shapes and intensities in these profiles are determined by the combined influence of these unknowns (together with the other above-given parameters).In this paper we describe a method to determine these six unknowns empirically by separating them, in analysing accurate high-resolution observations of line profiles of a multiplet. The unknown functions and quantities are consecutively determined in the above given succession. For each determination another, appropriate part of the line profile is used. In some cases the influence of the mutual coupling of the various parameters cannot be completely eliminated, and an iterative method has to be used.The method is summarized in Table II and section 2, and is further explained in sections 3 to 8. It is applied to an infrared Ci multiplet. The main results are the following: