Center for Solar Terrestrial Research
Detecting coherent radio bursts from nearby M dwarfs provides opportunities for exploring their magnetic activity and interaction with orbiting exoplanets. However, it remains uncertain if the emission is related to flare-like activity similar to the Sun or magnetospheric process akin to magnetized planets. Using observations (1.0 - 1.5 GHz) taken by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, we found a type of millisecond-scale radio bursts with exceptionally high frequency drift rates (8  GHz  s1\sim 8\;\rm{GHz\;s^{-1}}) from an active M dwarf, AD Leo. The ultrafast drift rates point to a source region with a notably low magnetic scale height (<0.15\; r_\star, rr_\star as the stellar radius), a feature not expected in a commonly assumed dipole-like global field but highly possible in localized strong-field structures, i.e. starspots. Our findings suggest that a concentrated magnetic field above starspots could be responsible for some of the most intense radio bursts from M dwarfs, supporting a solar-like electron acceleration mechanism.
We investigate the aftermath of a giant quiescent solar filament eruption on December 24, 2023. One feature of the eruption is an extensive fan above the filament channel that is about three times as wide as similar structures that appear above active regions (ARs) during solar flares. The fan contains numerous supra-arcade downflows (SADs), and we investigate the largest SADs with continuous Hinode X-ray Telescope (XRT) observations. The measured maximum width of the SADs in this event is at least three times the maximum width of SADs observed in AR flares, whereas the velocities of the largest SADs are similar to the typical values of AR SADs. The kinetic characteristics of the largest SADs observed in this event align with previous model predictions, where SADs originate from the non-linear development of Rayleigh-Taylor type instabilities. In this scenario, the larger system size allows the existence of larger-scale instabilities, while the development of the velocities of these instabilities is expected to be independent of the system size. Compared to AR flares, the temperature and emission measure in this event are lower, and there is less overall radiation, resulting in no evident Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) signature. Similar to those in AR flares, SADs show lower temperatures compared to the surrounding fan plasma. Our observations show that SADs are present in a wide variety of eruptions. The reconnection mechanisms present in quiescent filament eruptions are similar to those driving more compact eruptions originating from ARs.
A subclass of early impulsive solar flares, cold flares, was proposed to represent a clean case, where the release of the free magnetic energy (almost) entirely goes to acceleration of the nonthermal electrons, while the observed thermal response is entirely driven by the nonthermal energy deposition to the ambient plasma. This paper studies one more example of a cold flare, which was observed by a unique combination of instruments. In particular, this is the first cold flare observed with the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array and, thus, for which the dynamical measurement of the coronal magnetic field and other parameters at the flare site is possible. With these new data, we quantified the coronal magnetic field at the flare site, but did not find statistically significant variations of the magnetic field within the measurement uncertainties. We estimated that the uncertainty in the corresponding magnetic energy exceeds the thermal and nonthermal energies by an order of magnitude; thus, there should be sufficient free energy to drive the flare. We discovered a very prominent soft-hard-soft spectral evolution of the microwave-producing nonthermal electrons. We computed energy partitions and concluded that the nonthermal energy deposition is likely sufficient to drive the flare thermal response similarly to other cold flares.
We present the first joint high-resolution observations of small-scale EUV jets using Solar Orbiter(SolO)'s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager and High Resolution Imager (HRI) and Hα\alpha imaging from the Visible Imaging Spectrometer (VIS) installed on the 1.6~m Goode Solar Telescope (GST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). These jets occurred on 2022-10-29 around 19:10 UT in a quiet Sun region and their main axis aligns with the overarching magnetic structure traced by a cluster of spicules. However, they develop a helical morphology, while the Hα\alpha spicules maintain straight, linear trajectories elsewhere. Alongside the spicules, thin, elongated red- and blue-shifted Hα\alpha features appear to envelope the EUV jets, which we tentatively call sheath flows. The EUI jet moving upward at speed of ~110 km/s is joined by strong Hα\alpha red-shift ~20 km/s to form the bidirectional outflows lasting ~2 min. Using AI-assisted differential emission measure (DEM) analysis of SolO's Full Sun Imager (FSI) we derived total energy of the EUV jet as ~1.9×10261.9 \times 10^{26} erg with 87% in thermal energy and 13% in kinetic energy. The parameters and morphology of this small-scale EUV jet are interpreted based on a thin flux tube model that predicts Alfvenic waves driven by impulsive interchange reconnection localized as narrowly as ~1.6 Mm with magnetic flux of ~5.4×10175.4\times 10^{17} Mx, belonging to the smallest magnetic features in the quiet Sun. This detection of intricate corona--chromospheric coupling highlights the power of high-resolution imaging in unraveling the mechanisms behind small-scale solar ejections across atmospheric layers.
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