Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1510579
This article is part of the Research Topic New Insights into High-Energy Processes on the Sun and Their Geospace Consequences View all 9 articles

Modeling the Transport and Anisotropy of Energetic Electrons in Solar Flares

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Shandong University, Weihai, Weihai, China
  • 2 Shandong University, Qingdao, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Transport of energetic electrons in the flare loop is important to understanding nonthermal emissions in solar flares. In this work, we model the propagation of electrons by numerically solving the particle transport equation which includes the physics of magnetic mirroring and turbulent pitch-angle diffusion. We find that both the fractions of electrons trapped in the looptop and precipitating into the solar surface display a non-monotonic behavior with increasing scattering rate. In the moderate diffusion regime, the precipitation fraction is highest and we expect intense nonthermal HXR and microwave emissions at the footpoints. With no or weak pitchangle scattering, the velocity space distribution can be highly anisotropic both in the looptop and loopleg regions. Different patterns of stripes with positive gradients in the perpendicular direction can drive the electron cyclotron maser instability with higher efficiency than the classical loss-cone distribution, facilitating the excitation of coherent solar radio bursts. Our simulation results highlight the effects of turbulent pitch-angle scattering on electron trap/precipitation and anisotropic distribution in solar flares, which may help us understand the precipitation of magnetospheric electrons accounting for the aurora as well.

    Keywords: solar flares, Energetic electrons, Particle Transport, Solar X-ray emission, solar radio emission

    Received: 13 Oct 2024; Accepted: 26 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kong, Ning and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xiangliang Kong, Shandong University, Weihai, Weihai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.