Decay of the coronal magnetic field can release sufficient energy to power a solar flare
Magnetic energy release in a solar flare
Solar flares are bright flashes and associated eruptions of plasma from the Sun that are thought to be powered by violent rearrangement of the magnetic fields near sunspots. Fleishman et al. observed a bright solar flare with a microwave interferometer, allowing them to map the magnetic field in the solar corona and monitor how it changed during the flare. They found a large drop in the local field strength over 2 minutes, releasing enough magnetic energy to power the entire solar flare. Determining the origin of this energy will help to predict how strong future solar flares may be and their potential space weather impacts on Earth.
Science, this issue p. 278
Abstract
Solar flares are powered by a rapid release of energy in the solar corona, thought to be produced by the decay of the coronal magnetic field strength. Direct quantitative measurements of the evolving magnetic field strength are required to test this. We report microwave observations of a solar flare, showing spatial and temporal changes in the coronal magnetic field. The field decays at a rate of ~5 Gauss per second for 2 minutes, as measured within a flare subvolume of ~1028 cubic centimeters. This fast rate of decay implies a sufficiently strong electric field to account for the particle acceleration that produces the microwave emission. The decrease in stored magnetic energy is enough to power the solar flare, including the associated eruption, particle acceleration, and plasma heating.
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Supplementary Material
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Science
Volume 367 | Issue 6475
17 January 2020
17 January 2020
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
Submission history
Received: 13 April 2019
Accepted: 4 December 2019
Published in print: 17 January 2020
Acknowledgments
We thank the scientists and engineers who helped design and build EOVSA, especially G. Hurford, S. White, J. McTiernan, W. Grammer, and K. Nelin. Funding: This work was supported in part by NSF grants AGS-1817277, AST-1910354, and AGS-1654382 and NASA grants NNX17AB82G, 80NSSC18K0667, 80NSSC19K0068, and 80NSSC18K1128 to the New Jersey Institute of Technology. N.K. was partially supported by the NASA Living With a Star Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, administered by UCAR's Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS). Author contributions: G.D.F. developed the methodology, performed the model fitting, analyzed the results, and wrote the draft manuscript; D.E.G. led the construction and commissioning of the EOVSA and developed the observational strategy and calibration for microwave spectroscopy; B.C. developed the microwave spectral imaging and self-calibration strategy; N.K. wrote software used in the analysis and visualization; D.E.G., B.C., and S.Y. prepared the microwave observation data; S.Y. implemented the microwave imaging pipeline under the guidance of D.E.G. and B.C.; and G.M.N. developed software used in modeling and testing the spectral fitting methodology and developed the gsfit spectral fitting package. All authors discussed the interpretation of the data, contributed scientific results, and helped prepare the paper. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Raw EOVSA observational data used for this study are available at www.ovsa.njit.edu/fits/IDB/20170910/IDB20170910155625/. Fully processed EOVSA spectral imaging data (in IDL save format) are available at http://ovsa.njit.edu/publications/fleishman_ea_science_2019/data/. The microwave data fitting software, gsfit, is available in the community-contributed SolarSoftWare repository, under the packages category, at www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/ssw/packages/gsfit/.
Authors
Funding Information
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 80NSSC18K1128
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 80NSSC19K0068
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: NNX17AB82G
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 80NSSC18K0667
NSF Office of the Director: AGS-1817277
NSF Office of the Director: AST-1910354
NSF Office of the Director: AGS-1654382
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