OBSERVATIONS OF THERMAL FLARE PLASMA WITH THE EUV VARIABILITY EXPERIMENT

One of the defining characteristics of a solar flare is the impulsive formation of very high temperature plasma. The properties of the thermal emission are not well understood, however, and the analysis of solar flare observations is often predicated on the assumption that the flare plasma is isothe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2013-06, Vol.770 (2), p.1-11
Main Authors: Warren, Harry P, MARISKA, JOHN T, Doschek, George A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
APPROXIMATIONS
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DISTRIBUTION
Emission
Emission analysis
Flares
Fluxes
GOES SATELLITES
Mathematical analysis
PLASMA
SOFT X RADIATION
SOLAR FLARES
Solar observatories
SPECTRA
SUN
TEMPERATURE RANGE 1000-4000 K
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Summary:One of the defining characteristics of a solar flare is the impulsive formation of very high temperature plasma. The properties of the thermal emission are not well understood, however, and the analysis of solar flare observations is often predicated on the assumption that the flare plasma is isothermal. The EUV Variability Experiment (EVE) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory provides spectrally resolved observations of emission lines that span a wide range of temperatures (e.g., Fexv-Fexxiv) and allow for thermal flare plasma to be studied in detail. In this paper we describe a method for computing the differential emission measure distribution in a flare using EVE observations and apply it to several representative events. We find that in all phases of the flare the differential emission measure distribution is broad. Comparisons of EVE spectra with calculations based on parameters derived from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites soft X-ray fluxes indicate that the isothermal approximation is generally a poor representation of the thermal structure of a flare.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/770/2/116