Thermodynamic evolution of a sigmoidal active region with associated flares

TL;DR

This study investigates the thermodynamic evolution of a sigmoidal active region using multi-instrument observations, revealing multi-thermal plasma with peak temperatures of 10-12.5 MK and benchmarking various temperature estimation techniques.

Contribution

It provides detailed thermodynamic analysis of a sigmoidal active region and compares different temperature measurement methods, enhancing modeling constraints.

Findings

Multi-thermal plasma along the sigmoid with peak temperatures of 10-12.5 MK.

Hot plasma confined to very hot strands within the sigmoid.

Good agreement between different temperature estimation techniques.

Abstract

Active regions often show S-shaped structures in the corona called sigmoids. These are highly sheared and twisted loops formed along the polarity inversion line. They are considered to be one of the best pre-eruption signatures for CMEs. Here, we investigate the thermodynamic evolution of an on-disk sigmoid observed during December 24-28, 2015. For this purpose, we have employed Emission Measure (EM) and filter-ratio techniques on the observations recorded by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and X-ray Telescope (XRT) onboard Hinode. The EM analysis showed multi-thermal plasma along the sigmoid and provided a peak temperature of 10-12.5 MK for all observed flares. The sigmoidal structure showed emission from Fe XVIII (93.93 {\AA}) and Fe XXI 128.75 {\AA}) lines in the AIA 94 and 131 {\AA} channels, respectively. Our results show that the hot plasma is often confined to very hot strands. The temperature obtained from the EM analysis was found to be in good agreement with that obtained using the XRT, AIA, and GOES filter-ratio methods. These results provide important constraints for the thermodynamic modeling of sigmoidal structures in the core of active regions. Moreover, this study also benchmarks different techniques available for temperature estimation in solar coronal structures.