Particle/fluid simulations of an eruptive flare: Identifying the field-aligned currents responsible for the hard X-rays

Abstract

While MHD can provide a reasonable description of the overall magnetic reconnection that is believed to drive flares, additional, and often separate processes have to be envoked to in order to explain the electron acceleration that is responsible for many of the observed flare emissions. A new model that incorporates the dynamic coronal current sheets, the reconnection site, and possible electron acceleration processes is developed through the use of two-dimensional particle and modified two-fluid simulations. The specific example of an eruptive flare driven by the coalescence of flux tubes supported by prescribed photospheric current elements is evaluated. It is shown that the electrons and ions have differential trajectories through the coronal current sheet which leads to the development of additional plasma currents that flow around the surface of the current sheet. These surface currents are explicitly neglected in MHD but they are vital to the flare dynamics because they divert current from the coronal current sheet into the chromosphere, producing an effective resistivity that aids the development of fast reconnection. Because the surface currents are in the plane of the magnetic field, electrons in them experience strong acceleration and can account for the observed hard X-ray emissions. Model predictions are compared with observed time profiles of hard X-ray emissions and Doppler shifts seen in soft X-ray line emissions and are able to account for such features as (i) the asymmetry in the rise and decay time of the hard X-rays, (ii) the apparent delay between the largest Doppler shifts and the hard X-ray peak, and (iii) the relatively low intensity of the blue-shifted component. The use of particle and fluid simulations is important because it provides different, but complementary treatments of the electron acceleration, the global magnetic morphology, and the flare current system.