The Relationships among Solar Flare Impulsiveness, Energy Release, and Ribbon Development

Abstract

We develop the impulsiveness index, a new classification system for solar flares using the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Extreme Ultraviolet Experiment 304 Å Sun-as-a-star light curves. Impulsiveness classifies events based on the duration and intensity of the initial high-energy deposition of energy into the chromosphere. In stellar flare U-band light curves, Kowalski et al. found that impulsiveness is related to quantities such as a proxy for the Balmer jump ratio. However, the lack of direct spatial resolution in stellar flares limits our ability to explain this phenomenon. We calculate impulsiveness for 1368 solar flares between 2010 April and 2014 May. We divide events into categories of low, mid, and high impulsiveness. We find, in a sample of 480 flares, that events with high maximum reconnection rate tend to also have high impulsiveness. For six case studies, we compare impulsiveness to magnetic shear, ribbon evolution, and energy release. We find that the end of the 304 Å light-curve rise phase in these case studies corresponds to the cessation of polarity inversion line (PIL)-parallel ribbon motion, while PIL-perpendicular motion persists afterward in most cases. The measured guide-field ratio for low- and mid-impulsiveness case-study flares decreases about an order of magnitude during the impulsive flare phase. Finally, we find that, in four of the six case studies, flares with higher, more persistent shear tend to have low impulsiveness. Our study suggests that impulsiveness may be related to other properties of the impulsive phase, though more work is needed to verify this relationship and apply our findings to stellar flare physics.