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Observing the formation of flare-driven coronal rain

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Scullion_2016_ApJ_833_184.pdf (12.06Mb)
Date
20/12/2016
Author
Scullion, E.
Rouppe Van Der Voort, L.
Antolin, P.
Wedemeyer, S.
Vissers, G.
Kontar, E. P.
Gallagher, P.
Keywords
Sun
Methods: observational
Methods: data analysis
Techniques: image processing
Techniques: spectroscopic
Telescopes
QB Astronomy
QC Physics
NDAS
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Abstract
Flare-driven coronal rain can manifest from rapidly cooled plasma condensations near coronal loop-tops in thermally unstable post-flare arcades. We detect 5 phases that characterise the post-flare decay:heating, evaporation, conductive cooling dominance for ~120 s, radiative/ enthalpy cooling dominance for ~4700 s and finally catastrophic cooling occurring within 35-124 s leading to rain strands with s periodicity of 55-70 s. We find an excellent agreement between the observations and model predictions of the dominant cooling timescales and the onset of catastrophic cooling. At the rain formation site we detect co-moving, multi-thermal rain clumps that undergo catastrophic cooling from ~1 MK to ~22000 K. During catastrophic cooling the plasma cools at a maximum rate of 22700 K s-1 in multiple loop-top sources. We calculated the density of the EUV plasma from the DEM of the multi-thermal source employing regularised inversion. Assuming a pressure balance, we estimate the density of the chromospheric component of rain to be 9.21x1011 ±1.76x1011 cm-3 which is comparable with quiescent coronal rain densities. With up to 8 parallel strands in the EUV loop cross section, we calculate the mass loss rate from the post-flare arcade to be as much as 1.98x1012 ± 4.95x1011 g s-1. Finally, we reveal a close proximity between the model predictions of 105.8 K and the observed properties between 105.9 K and 106.2 K, that defines the temperature onset of catastrophic cooling. The close correspondence between the observations and numerical models suggests that indeed acoustic waves (with a sound travel time of 68 s) could play an important role in redistributing energy and sustaining the enthalpy-based radiative cooling.
Citation
Scullion , E , Rouppe Van Der Voort , L , Antolin , P , Wedemeyer , S , Vissers , G , Kontar , E P & Gallagher , P 2016 , ' Observing the formation of flare-driven coronal rain ' , Astrophysical Journal , vol. 833 , no. 2 , 184 . https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/833/2/184
Publication
Astrophysical Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/833/2/184
ISSN
0004-637X
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016, American Astronomical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at iopscience.iop.org / http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/833/2/184
Description
PA. GV are funded by the European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement nr. 291058
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.09255
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016arXiv161009255S
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10001

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