Particle acceleration by a solar flare termination shock.
- Chen B Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. bin.chen@njit.edu.
- Bastian TS National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA.
- Shen C Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
- Gary DE New Jersey Institute of Technology, 323 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Newark, NJ 07102, USA.
- Krucker S University of California, Berkeley, 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Bahnhofstrasse 6, 5210 Windisch, Switzerland.
- Glesener L University of California, Berkeley, 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 116 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
- 2016-01-20
Published in:
- Science (New York, N.Y.). - 2015
English
Solar flares--the most powerful explosions in the solar system--are also efficient particle accelerators, capable of energizing a large number of charged particles to relativistic speeds. A termination shock is often invoked in the standard model of solar flares as a possible driver for particle acceleration, yet its existence and role have remained controversial. We present observations of a solar flare termination shock and trace its morphology and dynamics using high-cadence radio imaging spectroscopy. We show that a disruption of the shock coincides with an abrupt reduction of the energetic electron population. The observed properties of the shock are well reproduced by simulations. These results strongly suggest that a termination shock is responsible, at least in part, for accelerating energetic electrons in solar flares.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- bronze
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1126/science.aac8467
- PMID 26785486
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/208798
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