MULTI-WAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS OF THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF SOLAR FLARES WITH AIA/SDO. II. HYDRODYNAMIC SCALING LAWS AND THERMAL ENERGIES
- Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Org. ADBS, Bldg. 252, 3251 Hanover St., Palo Alto, CA 94304 (United States)
- Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Chuo, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 252-5210 (Japan)
In this study we measure physical parameters of the same set of 155 M- and X-class solar flares observed with AIA/SDO as analyzed in Paper I, by performing a differential emission measure analysis to determine the flare peak emission measure EM{sub p} , peak temperature T{sub p} , electron density n{sub p} , and thermal energy E{sub th}, in addition to the spatial scales L, areas A, and volumes V measured in Paper I. The parameter ranges for M- and X-class flares are log (EM{sub p}) = 47.0-50.5, T{sub p} = 5.0-17.8 MK, n{sub p} = 4 × 10{sup 9}-9 × 10{sup 11} cm{sup –3}, and thermal energies of E{sub th} = 1.6 × 10{sup 28}-1.1 × 10{sup 32} erg. We find that these parameters obey the Rosner-Tucker-Vaiana (RTV) scaling law T{sub p}{sup 2}∝n{sub p} L and H∝T {sup 7/2} L {sup –2} during the peak time t{sub p} of the flare density n{sub p} , when energy balance between the heating rate H and the conductive and radiative loss rates is achieved for a short instant and thus enables the applicability of the RTV scaling law. The application of the RTV scaling law predicts power-law distributions for all physical parameters, which we demonstrate with numerical Monte Carlo simulations as well as with analytical calculations. A consequence of the RTV law is also that we can retrieve the size distribution of heating rates, for which we find N(H)∝H {sup –1.8}, which is consistent with the magnetic flux distribution N(Φ)∝Φ{sup –1.85} observed by Parnell et al. and the heating flux scaling law F{sub H} ∝HL∝B/L of Schrijver et al.. The fractal-diffusive self-organized criticality model in conjunction with the RTV scaling law reproduces the observed power-law distributions and their slopes for all geometrical and physical parameters and can be used to predict the size distributions for other flare data sets, instruments, and detection algorithms.
- OSTI ID:
- 22270816
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 776, 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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