Spectral observations of Ellerman bombs and fitting with a two-cloud model

We study the Hα and Ca II 8542 Å line spectra of four typical Ellerman bombs (EBs) in the active region NOAA 11765 on 2013 June 6, observed with the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph installed at the 1.6 m New Solar Telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory. Considering that EBs may occur in a restricted region in the lower atmosphere, and that their spectral lines show particular features, we propose a two-cloud model to fit the observed line profiles. The lower cloud can account for the wing emission, and the upper cloud is mainly responsible for the absorption at line center. After choosing carefully the free parameters, we get satisfactory fitting results. As expected, the lower cloud shows an increase of the source function, corresponding to a temperature increase of 400-1000 K in EBs relative to the quiet Sun. This is consistent with previous results deduced from semi-empirical models and confirms that local heating occurs in the lower atmosphere during the appearance of EBs. We also find that the optical depths can increase to some extent in both the lower and upper clouds, which may result from either direct heating in the lower cloud, or illumination by an enhanced radiation on the upper cloud. The velocities derived from this method, however, are different from those obtained using the traditional bisector method, implying that one should be cautious when interpreting this parameter. The two-cloud model can thus be used as an efficient method to deduce the basic physical parameters of EBs.