On the temporal and spatial properties of elementary bursts

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2006

Abstract

"Elementary bursts" refer to fine time structures on scales of tens of milli-second to a few seconds in flare radiations. In this paper, we investigate temporal and spatial properties of elementary bursts by exploiting high-cadence Hα (100 ms) and hard X-ray (125 - 500 ms) observations of an impulsive flare on March 16, 2000. We find that the time scale of 2 - 3 s is likely an upper limit of the elementary bursts in this event, at which hard X-ray emissions observed by different instruments correlate, low energy (≤30 keV) hard X-rays and Hα flux correlate, and Hα emissions at conjugate flare kernels correlate. From our methods, and also largely limited by instrument resolutions, there is a weak indication of existence of sub-second structures. With the high-resolution Hα data, we also attempt to explore the spatial structure of "elementary bursts" by determining the average spatial displacement of Hα peak emission between successive "elementary bursts" defined from hard X-ray light curves. We find that, at the time scale of 3 s, the smallest spatial scale, as limited by the imaging resolution, is about 0.4″. We discuss these results with respect to mechanisms of fragmented magnetic energy release. © Springer 2006.

Identifier

33746087604 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Solar Physics

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-006-0050-4

e-ISSN

1573093X

ISSN

00380938

First Page

293

Last Page

311

Issue

2

Volume

236

Grant

ATM-0603789

Fund Ref

National Science Foundation

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