New estimation of non-thermal electron energetics in the giant solar flare on 28 October 2003 based on Mars Odyssey observations

Abstract

A new estimation of the total number and energy of the non-thermal electrons produced in the giant (>X17) solar flare on 2003 October 28 is presented based on the analysis of the observations of the hard X-ray (HXR) emission by the High Energy Neutron Detector (HEND) onboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft orbiting Mars. Previous estimations of the non-thermal electron energy based on the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) data were incomplete since RHESSI missed the peak of the flare impulsive phase. In contrast, HEND observed the whole flare. We used two models to estimate the energy of the non-thermal electrons: the cold thick target model and the warm thick target model. More specifically, in the second case we employed an approximation which relates the pitch-angle averaged injection spectrum with the electron spectrum integrated over the emitting source. We found that, depending on the model used and the low-energy cutoff (Ec) of the non-thermal electrons, the estimate of their total energy in the entire flare can vary from 2.3×1032 to 6.2×1033 ergs. The lowest estimate, 2.3×1032 ergs, obtained within the cold thick target model and fixed Ec=43 keV, is consistent with the previous estimate. In this case, non-thermal electrons accelerated in the peak of the flare impulsive phase missed by RHESSI contained approximately 40% of the total energy of non-thermal electrons of the entire flare. The highest value, 6.2×1033 ergs, obtained with the cold thick target model and fixed Ec=10 keV, looks abnormally high, since it exceeds the total non-potential magnetic energy of the parent active region and the total bolometric energy radiated in the flare. Our estimates also show that the total number and energetics of the HXR-producing electrons in the flare region is a few orders of magnitude higher than of the population of energetic electrons injected into interplanetary space.