Quantifying Chromosphere Response to Flare Energy Release Using AIA Observations in 1600~\AA\ and 304~\AA\ Passbands

TL;DR

This study uses AIA UV and EUV observations to analyze the rapid response of the solar chromosphere during flares, revealing characteristic brightness and decay profiles that enhance understanding of flare energy release.

Contribution

It provides a systematic semi-quantitative analysis of flare ribbon brightness and temporal evolution in UV and EUV passbands, utilizing over a decade of AIA data.

Findings

Bright flare pixels have sharp light curves with rapid rise and decay times.

Flare ribbon brightness in UV and EUV follow similar temporal profiles and are related by a power law.

AIA UV 1600 Å brightness is a meaningful measure of chromospheric flare response.

Abstract

Imaging observations of the solar lower atmosphere by the Atmosphere Imaging Assembly (AIA) have been mostly used as the context, and their quantitative information has been much less explored. The chromosphere responds rapidly to energy release by magnetic reconnection during flares. Furthermore, a flare is a collection of multiple energy release events that can be identified in spatially resolved chromosphere observations. In this paper, we conduct a statistical and semi-quantitative study of the relative photometry in the UV 1600~\AA\ and EUV 304~\AA\ passbands for 18 flares observed by AIA. In each flare, we have identified thousands of flare ribbon pixels in the UV 1600~\AA\ images, and measured their brightness (counts per second) and the rise and decay timescales, which are indicative of heating properties in flare loops. The analysis shows that bright flare pixels, characterized by peak brightness larger than ten times the quiescent brightness, exhibit sharp light curves with the half rise time below 2 min, followed by a two-phase decay with a rapid decay on timescales comparable to the rise time and then a more gradual decay. Flare ribbon pixels identified in both UV 1600 ~\AA\ and EUV 304~\AA\ images exhibit similar time profiles during the rise, and their peak brightness appear to be related by a power law. Our analysis shows that AIA observed flare brightness in UV 1600~\AA\ relative to the quiescent brightness is a meaningful measurement of the flare chromosphere photometry, and AIA observations for over a decade thus provide a unique and extensive database for systematic and semi-quantitative study of flaring chromosphere, either in the context of the Sun as a star, or in spatially resolved manner that helps to probe the nature of flare energy release on elementary scales.