Plasma dynamics in the flaring loop observed by RHESSI

TL;DR

This study combines RHESSI observations with hydrodynamic modeling to analyze plasma density changes and mass evaporation in solar flares, confirming the link between non-thermal electron precipitation and chromospheric plasma dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical model linking HXR source altitude-energy relations with plasma density and mass evaporation during solar flares.

Findings

HXR source altitudes correlate with plasma density distribution.

Mass of evaporated plasma matches hydrodynamical model predictions.

High-energy HXR sources align with column density changes from models.

Abstract

The thick-target model predicts that in flare foot points, we should observe lowering of HXR sources' altitude with increasing energy. The foot point of HXR sources result from the direct interaction of non-thermal electron beams with plasma in the lower part of the solar atmosphere, where the density increases rapidly. Therefore, we can estimate the plasma density distribution along the non-thermal electron beam directly from the observations of the altitude-energy relation obtained for the HXR foot point sources. The relation's shape is density-dependent and is also determined by the power-law distribution of non-thermal electrons. Additionally, during the impulsive phase these parameters may change dramatically. Thus, the interpretation of observed HXR foot point sources' altitudes is not straightforward and needs detailed numerical modelling of the electron precipitation process. The numerical model was calculated using the hydrodynamic 1D model with an application of the Fokker-Planck formalism for non-thermal beam precipitation. HXR data from RHESSI were used to trace chromospheric density changes during a non-thermal emission burst, in detail. We have found that the amount of mass that evaporated from the chromosphere is in good agreement with the ranges obtained from hydrodynamical modelling of a flaring loop, and from an analysis of observed emission measure in the loop top, and with specific scaling laws. Consistency between the obtained values shows that HXR images may provide an important constraint for models - a mass of plasma that evaporated due to a non-thermal electron beam depositing energy in the chromosphere. High-energy, non-thermal sources' (above 20 keV in this case) positions fit the column density changes obtained from the hydrodynamical model perfectly. Density changes seem to be less affected by the electrons' spectral index.