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.


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