Data-constrained 3D modeling of a solar flare evolution: acceleration, transport, heating, and energy budget

TL;DR

This paper presents a data-constrained 3D model of a solar flare that tracks the evolution of energy components, revealing new insights into electron acceleration, transport, and plasma heating in a complex multi-loop environment.

Contribution

The study extends a validated 3D magnetic model to cover the entire flare evolution, enabling disentangling overlapping loops and analyzing energy partitioning in 3D.

Findings

Identified signatures of direct plasma heating independent of nonthermal electron energy loss.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of the 3D modeling approach in resolving line-of-sight ambiguities.

Revealed detailed electron acceleration and transport mechanisms during the flare.

Abstract

Solar flares are driven by release of the free magnetic energy and its conversion to other forms of energy -- kinetic, thermal, and nonthermal. Quantification of partitions between these energy components and their evolution is needed to understand the solar flare phenomenon including nonthermal particle acceleration, transport, and escape and the thermal plasma heating and cooling. The challenge of remote sensing diagnostics is that the data are taken with finite spatial resolution and suffer from line-of-sight (LOS) ambiguity including cases when different flaring loops overlap and project one over the other. Here we address this challenge by devising a data-constrained evolving 3D model of a multi-loop SOL2014-02-16T064620 solar flare of GOES class C1.5. Specifically, we employed a 3D magnetic model validated earlier for a single time frame and extended it to cover the entire flare evolution. For each time frame we adjusted the distributions of the thermal plasma and nonthermal electrons in the model, such as the observables synthesized from the model matched the observations. Once the evolving model has been validated this way, we computed and investigated the evolving energy components and other relevant parameters by integrating over the model volume. This approach removes the LOS ambiguity and permits to disentangle contributions from the overlapping loops. It reveals new facets of electron acceleration and transport, as well as heating and cooling the flare plasma in 3D. We find signatures of substantial direct heating of the flare plasma not associated with the energy loss of nonthermal electrons.