Excitation of Multiperiodic Kink Motions in Solar Flare Loops: Possible Application to Quasiperiodic Pulsations

Abstract

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves are often invoked to interpret quasiperiodic pulsations (QPPs) in solar flares. We study the response of a straight flare loop to a kink-like velocity perturbation using three-dimensional MHD simulations and forward model the microwave emissions using the fast gyrosynchrotron code. Kink motions with two periodicities are simultaneously generated, with the long-period component (P L = 57 s) being attributed to the radial fundamental kink mode and the short-period component (P S = 5.8 s) to the first leaky kink mode. Forward modeling results show that the two-periodic oscillations are detectable in the microwave intensities for some lines of sight. Increasing the beam size to (1″)2 does not wipe out the microwave oscillations. We propose that the first leaky kink mode is a promising candidate mechanism to account for short-period QPPs. Radio telescopes with high spatial resolutions can help distinguish between this new mechanism and such customary interpretations as sausage modes.