A large-scale search for evidence of quasi-periodic pulsations in solar flares

TL;DR

This study conducts a large-scale analysis of solar flares to identify quasi-periodic pulsations (QPP) within 1-300 seconds, revealing that approximately 30% of GOES and 8% of Fermi/GBM flares exhibit QPP signatures, with a common timescale of 5-30 seconds.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive statistical assessment of QPP prevalence in solar flares using Fourier analysis across multiple datasets and identifies a characteristic timescale of 5-30 seconds.

Findings

~30% of GOES flares show QPP signatures

~8% of Fermi/GBM flares show QPP signatures

Characteristic timescale of 5-30 seconds in QPP events

Abstract

The nature of quasi-periodic pulsations in solar flares is poorly constrained, and critically the general prevalence of such signals in solar flares is unknown. Therefore, we perform a large-scale search for evidence of signals consistent with quasi-periodic pulsations in solar flares, focusing on the 1 - 300s timescale. We analyse 675 M- and X-class flares observed by GOES in 1-8\AA\ soft X-rays between 2011 February 1 and 2015 December 31. Additionally, over the same era we analyse Fermi/GBM 15-25 keV X-ray data for each of these flares that was associated with a Fermi/GBM solar flare trigger, a total of 261 events. Using a model comparison method, we determine whether there is evidence for a substantial enhancement in the Fourier power spectrum that may be consistent with a QPP signature, based on three tested models; a power-law plus a constant, a broken power-law plus constant, and a power-law-plus-constant with an additional QPP signature component. From this, we determine that ~30% of GOES events and ~8% of Fermi/GBM events show strong signatures consistent with classical interpretations of QPP. For the remaining events either two or more tested models cannot be strongly distinguished from each other, or the events are well-described by single power-law or broken power-law Fourier power spectra. For both instruments, a preferred characteristic timescale of ~5-30 s was found in the QPP-like events, with no dependence on flare magnitude in either GOES or GBM data. We also show that individual events in the sample show similar characteristic timescales in both GBM and GOES datasets. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of solar flares and possible QPP mechanisms.