The Duration of Energy Deposition on Unresolved Flaring Loops in the Solar Corona

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamic modeling and IRIS observations to analyze energy deposition durations in unresolved solar flare loops, revealing insights into heating timescales and energy partitioning.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-threaded hydrodynamic model with variable heating durations to better match observed spectral line shifts in solar flares.

Findings

Longer heating durations (100-200 s) reproduce Doppler shifts well.

A distribution of shorter heating durations (median 50-100 s) fits observations better.

Modeled spectral line evolution agrees with IRIS flare data.

Abstract

Solar flares form and release energy across a large number of magnetic loops. The global parameters of flares, such as the total energy released, duration, physical size, etc., are routinely measured, and the hydrodynamics of a coronal loop subjected to intense heating have been extensively studied. It is not clear, however, how many loops comprise a flare, nor how the total energy is partitioned between them. In this work, we employ a hydrodynamic model to better understand the energy partition by synthesizing Si IV and Fe XXI line emission and comparing to observations of these lines with IRIS. We find that the observed temporal evolution of the Doppler shifts holds important information on the heating duration. To demonstrate this we first examine a single loop model, and find that the properties of chromospheric evaporation seen in Fe XXI can be reproduced by loops heated for long durations, while persistent red-shifts seen in Si IV cannot be reproduced by any single loop model. We then examine a multi-threaded model, assuming both a fixed heating duration on all loops, and a distribution of heating durations. For a fixed heating duration, we find that durations of 100 -- 200 s do a fair job of reproducing both the red- and blue-shifts, while a distribution of durations, with a median of about 50 -- 100 s, does a better job. Finally, we compare our simulations directly to observations of an M-class flare seen by IRIS, and find good agreement between the modeled and observed values given these constraints.