TY - JOUR
T1 - Solar flare accelerates nearly all electrons in a large coronal volume
AU - Fleishman, Gregory D.
AU - Nita, Gelu M.
AU - Chen, Bin
AU - Yu, Sijie
AU - Gary, Dale E.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the scientists and engineers who helped design and build the EOVSA, especially G. Hurford, S. White, J. McTiernan, W. Grammer and K. Nelin. This work was supported in part by NSF grants AGS-2121632, AGS-1817277, AST-1910354, AGS-2130832, AGS-1654382 and AST-2108853 and NASA grants 80NSSC18K0667, 80NSSC20K0627, 80NSSC20K1318, 80NSSC21K0623, 80NSSC19K0068 and 80NSSC18K1128 to New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/6/23
Y1 - 2022/6/23
N2 - Solar flares, driven by prompt release of free magnetic energy in the solar corona1,2, are known to accelerate a substantial portion (ten per cent or more)3,4 of available electrons to high energies. Hard X-rays, produced by high-energy electrons accelerated in the flare5, require a high ambient density for their detection. This restricts the observed volume to denser regions that do not necessarily sample the entire volume of accelerated electrons6. Here we report evolving spatially resolved distributions of thermal and non-thermal electrons in a solar flare derived from microwave observations that show the true extent of the acceleration region. These distributions show a volume filled with only (or almost only) non-thermal electrons while being depleted of the thermal plasma, implying that all electrons have experienced a prominent acceleration there. This volume is isolated from a surrounding, more typical flare plasma of mainly thermal particles with a smaller proportion of non-thermal electrons. This highly efficient acceleration happens in the same volume in which the free magnetic energy is being released2.
AB - Solar flares, driven by prompt release of free magnetic energy in the solar corona1,2, are known to accelerate a substantial portion (ten per cent or more)3,4 of available electrons to high energies. Hard X-rays, produced by high-energy electrons accelerated in the flare5, require a high ambient density for their detection. This restricts the observed volume to denser regions that do not necessarily sample the entire volume of accelerated electrons6. Here we report evolving spatially resolved distributions of thermal and non-thermal electrons in a solar flare derived from microwave observations that show the true extent of the acceleration region. These distributions show a volume filled with only (or almost only) non-thermal electrons while being depleted of the thermal plasma, implying that all electrons have experienced a prominent acceleration there. This volume is isolated from a surrounding, more typical flare plasma of mainly thermal particles with a smaller proportion of non-thermal electrons. This highly efficient acceleration happens in the same volume in which the free magnetic energy is being released2.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41586-022-04728-8
DO - 10.1038/s41586-022-04728-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 35676480
AN - SCOPUS:85131543039
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 606
SP - 674
EP - 677
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7915
ER -