It is widely accepted that solar flares involve release of magnetic energy stored in the solar corona above an active region, but existing models do not include the explicitly time-dependent electrodynamics needed to describe such energy release. A flare paradigm is discussed that includes the electromotive force (EMF) as the driver of the flare, and the flare-associated current that links different regions where magnetic reconnection, electron acceleration, the acceleration of mass motions and current closure occur. The EMF becomes localized across regions where energy conversion occurs, and is involved in energy propagation between these regions.
@article{arxiv.1803.10389,
title = {Rethinking the solar flare paradigm},
author = {D. B. Melrose},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.10389},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
16 pages, 3 figures, presented at First Asia_Pacific Conference on Plasma Physics, Chengdu, China, September 2017, to be published in Plasma Science and Technology, ID PST-2017-0486.R1