Dynamic modeling of coronal abundances during flares on M-dwarf stars

TL;DR

This paper models how coronal abundances change during flares on M-dwarf stars, revealing differences from solar flares and highlighting the impact of initial composition on coronal rain formation.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamic model of coronal abundance variations during M-dwarf flares, including extreme initial compositions like the inverse FIP effect.

Findings

Coronal rain formation is less likely during M-dwarf flares with high FIP element dominance.

Flaring in an inverse FIP dominated corona produces results similar to solar cases.

Depletion of low FIP elements affects the formation of coronal rain during flares.

Abstract

Solar atmospheric elemental abundances are now known to vary both in space and time. Dynamic modeling of these changes is therefore necessary to improve the accuracy of radiative hydrodynamic simulations. Recent studies have shown that including spatio-temporal variations in coronal abundances during solar flares leads to the formation of coronal condensations (rain), which are otherwise difficult to create in impulsively heated field aligned hydrodynamic flare models. These simulations start with a solar corona dominated by the first ionization potential (FIP) effect, and evaporate photospheric material into the post-flare loops. We here explore perhaps the most extreme non-solar starting condition for the coronal composition in these simulations: an initial corona dominated by the inverse FIP (iFIP) effect, such as is observed on active M-dwarf stars. We show that a flaring event in a corona enriched with high FIP elements leads to a solution similar to the solar case. Coronal rain is harder to form by this method during flares on M-dwarfs, however, if the corona is depleted of low FIP elements.