Suppression of Hydrogen Emission in an X-class White-light Solar Flare [SSA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1702.00638


We present unique NUV observations of a well-observed X-class flare from NOAA 12087 obtained at Ond\v{r}ejov Observatory. The flare shows a strong white-light continuum but no detectable emission in the higher Balmer and Lyman lines. RHESSI and Fermi observations indicate an extremely hard X-ray spectrum and gamma-ray emission. We use the RADYN radiative hydrodynamic code to perform two type of simulations. One where an energy of 3 x 10^11 erg/cm^2/s is deposited by an electron beam with a spectral index of ~3 and a second where the same energy is applied directly to the photosphere. The combination of observations and simulations allow us to conclude that the white-light emission and the suppression or complete lack of hydrogen emission lines is best explained by a model where the dominant energy deposition layer is located in the lower layers of the solar atmosphere rather than the chromosphere.

Read this paper on arXiv…

O. Prochazka, R. Milligan, J. Allred, et. al.
Fri, 3 Feb 17
23/55

Comments: 13 pages