HR: 08:30h
AN: SP41C-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Particle Acceleration and Plasma Heating by Turbulence in Solar Flares
AU: * Petrosian, V
EM: vahe@astronomy.stanford.edu
AF: Stanford University, Department of Physics, Stanford, CA 94305
AU: Liu, S
EM: liusm@stanford.edu
AF: Stanford University, Department of Physics, Stanford, CA 94305
AB: There is mounting theoretical and observational evidence in support of the idea that plasma turbulence plays an important role in solar flares. It is likely that the energy released by magnetic reconnections is channelled mainly into plasma waves or turbulence. The importance of turbulence in accelerating electrons and ions have been recognized for some time now and models based on particle acceleration by plasma waves have been shown to successfully reproduce many spectral and temporal features of the Solar Energetic Particles observed near the Earth and the X- and gamma-ray radiations produced by electrons and ions during the impulsive phase. New high spatial resolution observations by RHESSI have provided further evidence for this model. In this paper we will review briefly the model and describe some of the results based on particle and photon spectra and on the new high resolution images. Here are two examples: 1. We will show how the model can account for the prominent enhancement and distinct spectrum of ³He ions in some impulsive solar flares and discuss its potential to explain the enhancements of ultra-heavy ions observed by ACE and WIND, and the observed correlation between ion enhancements and the iron spectral index. 2. In the gradual decaying phase of many solar flares, RHESSI observations show that the flare plasma is being continuously heated near the looptop region, and that a suppression of conduction is needed to confine the source in the looptop region as observed. Turbulence could play important roles in both processes. The work is supported by NSF grant ATM-0312344, NASA grants NAG5-12111, and NAG5 11918-1 at Stanford.
DE: 2159 Plasma waves and turbulence
DE: 2451 Particle acceleration
DE: 7260 Theory and modeling
DE: 7514 Energetic particles (2114)
DE: 7519 Flares
SC: Solar Physics Division - AAS [SP]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly