SUZAKU/WAM AND RHESSI OBSERVATIONS OF NON-THERMAL ELECTRONS IN SOLAR MICROFLARES
- National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588 (Japan)
- Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
- Department of Physical Science, Hiroshima University, 1-3-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8526 (Japan)
We report on hard X-ray spectroscopy of solar microflares observed by the Wide-band All-sky Monitor (WAM), on board the Suzaku satellite, and by RHESSI. WAM transient data provide wide energy band (50 keV-5 MeV) spectra over a large field of view ({approx}2{pi} sr) with a time resolution of 1 s. WAM is attractive as a hard X-ray solar flare monitor due to its large effective area ({approx}800 cm{sup 2} at 100 keV, {approx}13 times larger than that of RHESSI). In particular, this makes it possible to search for high energy emission in microflares that is well below the RHESSI background. The WAM solar flare list contains six GOES B-class microflares that were simultaneously observed by RHESSI between the launch of Suzaku in 2005 July and 2010 March. At 100 keV, the detected WAM fluxes are more than {approx}20 times below the typical RHESSI instrumental background count rates. The RHESSI and WAM non-thermal spectra are in good agreement with a single power law with photon spectral indices between 3.3 and 4.5. In a second step, we also searched the RHESSI microflare list for events that should be detectable by WAM, assuming that the non-thermal power-law emission seen by RHESSI extends to >50 keV. From the 12 detectable events between 2005 July and 2007 February, 11 were indeed seen by WAM. This shows that microflares, similar to regular flares, can accelerate electrons to energies up to at least 100 keV.
- OSTI ID:
- 22126956
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 765, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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