Acceleration Processes

6 Acceleration Processes

A remarkable fraction of the total flare energy released first appears as kinetic particle energy in non-thermal electrons and ions (Section 5). White light observations (Section 4) suggest that in addition to the particles observed in X-rays and gamma-rays particles at lower energies (about 1 keV for electrons) transport energy to the upper chromosphere and transition region. The acceleration process thus is a major issue in flare physics and constitutes the core of the flare enigma. We will briefly review here the major ingredients of the current theories and then present the observational evidence.

The transfer of magnetic energy to kinetic particle energy has been observationally separated into two phases. In the impulsive flare phase, the concept is “bulk energization”, involving an increase of the electron energy by more than two orders of magnitude starting from the coronal thermal energy (some 0.1 keV) within less than 1 s as derived from hard X-ray observations (Kiplinger et al., 1984 ). The other class of acceleration occurs in a secondary phase, possibly as a result of the first phase such as shock wave initiated by a flare or an associated coronal mass ejection. The second phase may be less productive in particle acceleration, but is more important for solar energetic particles in interplanetary space.

We will concentrate here on bulk energization, in which the whole particle population gains energy and remains close to a Maxwellian distribution and/or develops a non-thermal tail. The acceleration of a particle to an energy E_kin requires that it occurs faster than the collision time $τcoll$ (E_kin) for energy loss. The energy loss time for an electrons with velocity $v3T$ is

where n_e is the electron density. Note that for densities up to some 10¹² cm^–3 are reported for coronal sources (Section 3.2). Equation (8

) yields a collision time requiring acceleration within less than one second. On the other hand, Equation (8

) excludes efficient particle acceleration at high densities if the process takes a finite time.

6.1 Electron acceleration theories
6.2 Comparing theories with observations