Inverse Compton Effect as a Possible Cause of the X-Ray Radiation of Solar Flares

Abstract

SHKLOVSKY1 has suggested the inverse Compton effect as a possible cause of the solar flare-burst emission of hard X-ray photons. This process, as its name implies, involves a scattering interaction between a relativistic electron and a low-energy photon. The interaction produces an X-ray photon and the electron loses a corresponding amount of its energy. The X-ray photon production rate from this process is directly proportional to the density of ambient photons, the density of energetic electrons and the square of the electron energy. Using a radiation density which is twice the photospheric value, he estimates that it is possible to account for the observed flare-burst X-ray emission in the 1–100 keV region if the total energy of 10–100 MeV electrons in a flare is of the order of 1030 ergs.