The solar flare extreme ultraviolet to hard X-ray ratio

Abstract

Simultaneous measurements of the peak 10-1030 A extreme ultraviolet (EUV) flux enhancement and more than 10 keV hard X-ray (HXR) peak flux of many solar flare bursts, ranging over about four orders of magnitude in HXR intensity, are studied. A real departure from linearity is found in the relationship between the peak EUV and HXR fluxes in impulsive flare bursts. This relationship is well described by a given power law. Comparison of the predictions of the impulsive nonthermal thick-target electron beam model with observations shows that the model satisfactorily predicts the observed time differences between the HXR and EUV peaks and explains the data very well under given specific assumptions. It is concluded that the high-energy fluxes implied by the invariant area thick-target model cannot be completely ruled out, while the invariant area model with smaller low cutoff requires impossibly large beam densities. A later alternative thick-target model is suggested.