ABSTRACT
The work that I participated in this summer was to look
at the relationship between solar flares and alpha
(the twist in the magnetic
field). According to Taylor's Relaxation principle, a constant
alpha corresponds to the lowest energy level. We therefore looked to
see if we could see the gradient in alpha smoothing out after a flaring event.
To do this we constructed maps of alpha and the gradient of alpha and
overlaid them on white light images (specheliograms) of the sun that were
integrated over time. We determined a flaring and non-flaring region.
We then looked at how the mean and variance of alpha changed after the
flare occurred. Our results showed that the majority of the events showed
an increase in both the mean and variance of alpha, which is the opposite
of what we expected. Since there was evidence of the results corresponding
to the number of points, we thought the emergence of new flux could be the
reason for this increase. Using the entire HSP data set we took a statistical
approach to looking how the positive change in area related to the change
in the following variables: mean of alpha, variance of alpha, alpha best and
change in flux. We also found the correlations of the same variables,
but not as a change in each variable. The second showed that flux emergence
and the variance in alpha are positively correlated so flux emergence is more
than likely our results showed an increase in the alpha variance.