Evaporation of chromospheric material

2.6 Evaporation of chromospheric material

When energetic electrons (and possibly ions) precipitate from the coronal acceleration site and lose their energy in the dense underlying chromosphere via Coulomb collisions, the plasma responds dynamically. Note that the same may result also from heat conduction, when thermal particles transport the energy released in the corona. The temperature in the chromosphere increases and the resulting pressure exceeds the ambient chromospheric pressure. If the overpressure builds up sufficiently fast, the heated plasma expands along the magnetic field in both directions. The expansion of this plasma into the corona was first reported by Doschek et al. (1980 ) and Feldman et al. (1980 ). It was thoroughly studied in blue-shifted lines of Ca xix by Antonucci et al. (1982 ), who found plasma at a temperature of 20 MK, moving with 300 to 400 km s^–1 and filling up the loop (Figure 14

). A summary can be found in Antonucci (1989 ). More recent observations from SOHO/CDS suggest an upflow velocity of 230 km s^–1 (Milligan et al., 2006

Figure 14:

Averaged density profile along a loop inferred from the separation of X-ray footpoints, moving up the flare loop in a very dense flare. Note the increase in density between the first profile (dashed) and last profile (dotted). The loop fills up in between from the bottom (solid curve) (from Liu et al., 2006

The evaporated hot plasma appears to be the source of most of the soft X-ray emission (Silva et al., 1997 ). Thus, the soft X-ray emitting plasma accumulates a significant fraction of the energy in the precipitating non-thermal electrons. Consequentially, the soft X-ray emission is proportional to the integrated preceding hard X-ray flux. As already noted by Neupert (1968 ), this may explain the effect named after him. Note that the scenario assumes that the observed soft X-ray plasma is not heated by the primary flare energy release, but is a secondary product when flare energy is transported to the chromosphere. This is an important point to remember in theories assuming that the coronal plasma is heated by flares.

The evaporation scenario predicts a linear relation between instantaneous energy deposition rate by the electron beam and time derivative of the cumulative energy in the thermal plasma, thus a linear relation between hard X-ray flux and derivative of the soft X-ray flux (Figure 12 ). This is not always the case (Dennis and Zarro, 1993 ). There are several reasons for this: (i) the spectral index of the hard X-rays changes with time in most flares (Section 5.2), (ii) the flare energy may be preferentially transported by heat conduction (particularly in the pre-flare phase), and (iii) ions may contribute to the energy deposition. Some flares, however, fit extremely well and a time lag in the flare thermal energy of only 3 seconds relative to the energy input as observed in hard X-rays has been reported by Liu et al. (2006 ).

Evaporation is the result of coupling between corona and chromosphere. Such coupling is expected from the fact that the transition region separating the two layers in the solar atmosphere is relatively small compared to the mean free path length in the corona. The chromosphere is only a few collisions away from the corona even for thermal particles. There must be a constant heat flow through the transition region. In the impulsive phase of a flare, non-thermal particles may well dominate the energy transfer.

The expansion of the heated chromospheric plasma is driven by pressure gradients. Thus “evaporation” is a misnomer, as the phenomenon is no phase transition nor the escape of the fastest particles, but is an MHD process and more like an explosion. Wuelser et al. (1994 ) report downflowing material in H $α$ at the location of the flare loop footpoints, suggesting a motion opposite to evaporation in the low chromosphere. The upflowing hot plasma and the downflowing chromospheric plasma have equal momenta, as required by the conservation of momentum in a ballistic explosion. Evaporation due to a flare may thus be understood as a sudden heating in the chromosphere, followed by an expansion that is initially supersonic.

Brosius and Phillips (2004 ) presented evidence of much more gentle kind of evaporation during the preflare phase of a flare. The maximum velocity in Ca xix was found to be only 65 km s^–1. Such gentle evaporation below the coronal sound speed is interpreted by a non-thermal electron flux below 3 $×$ 10¹⁰ erg cm^–2 s^–1 (Milligan et al., 2006 ). Zarro and Lemen (1988 ) found signatures of gentle evaporation in the post flare phase, and Singh et al. (2005 ) reported signatures of evaporation also in a non-flaring state of a loop, suggesting thermal conduction of a hot coronal loop as the driver. These observations confirm that the evaporative response of the chromosphere depends sensitively on the flux of incident electrons. Fisher and Hawley (1990 ) have studied evaporation due to thermal energy input into the corona. Evaporation resulting from non-thermal particle precipitation has been simulated by several groups (Sterling et al., 1993 ; Hori et al., 1998 ; Reeves et al., 2007 ). In general, the results of these simulations agree with observed flare emissions quite well, indicating that the standard model of solar flares is energetically consistent with observations.