Estimations of Elemental Abundances During Solar Flares Observed in Soft X-rays by the MinXSS-1 CubeSat Mission

TL;DR

This study analyzes the elemental abundance variations during solar flares using soft X-ray spectra from the MinXSS-1 CubeSat, revealing depletion patterns consistent with chromospheric evaporation.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurements of elemental abundance changes during solar flares using high-resolution soft X-ray spectra from MinXSS-1.

Findings

Elemental abundances of Fe, Ca, S, Si, and Ar are depleted during SXR peak.

Depletion patterns are consistent with chromospheric evaporation.

Observed abundances match theoretical models of flare plasma composition.

Abstract

Solar flares are complex phenomena emitting all types of electromagnetic radiation, and accelerating particles on timescales of minutes, converting magnetic energy to thermal, radiative, and kinetic energy through magnetic reconnections. As a result, local plasma can be heated to temperatures in excess of 20 MK. During the soft X-ray (SXR) solar flare peak, the elemental abundance of low first-ionization potential (FIP) elements are typically observed to be depleted from coronal values. We explored the abundance variations using disk-integrated solar spectra from the Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer CubeSat-1 (MinXSS-1). MinXSS-1 is sensitive to the 1-12 keV energy range with an effective 0.25 keV full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) resolution at 5.9 keV. During the year-long mission of MinXSS-1, between May 2016 - May 2017, 21 flares with intermittent data downlinks were observed ranging from C to M class. We examine the time evolution of temperature, volume emission measure, and elemental abundances of Fe, Ca, Si, S, and Ar with CHIANTI spectral models near the peak SXR emission times observed in the MinXSS-1 data. We determined the average absolute abundance of A(Fe) = 7.81, A(Ca) = 6.84, A(S) = 7.28, A(Si) = 7.90, and A(Ar) = 6.56. These abundances are depleted from coronal values during the SXR peak compared to non-flaring times. The elemental abundance values that are depleted from their coronal values are consistent with the process of chromospheric evaporation, in which the lower atmospheric plasma fills the coronal loops.