| Presentation Title: | How much return current electric field mirroring occurs in solar flares? |
| Author(s): | Meriem Alaoui, Gordon Holman, Marc Swisdak |
Abstract:
High energy solar flare electrons carry a substantial fraction of the flare’s energy. Estimating this energy flux, usually at the chromosphere, involves analyzing X-ray spectra, hydrodynamic models, and chromospheric and coronal line emissions. Therefore, understanding changes in electron distributions during the beam propagation is crucial. A key focus of this talk is how the co-spatial return current reduces the accelerated non-thermal energy flux and the extent of this reduction both in the fully beamed case, and when the pitch-angle distribution of the injected beam is isotropic in the forward direction.
We systematically compute this reduction for various beam and plasma parameters relevant to solar flares. Our model accounts for collisions between beam and plasma electrons, return current electric-field deceleration, thermalization in a warm target approximation, and runaway electron contributions. The results focus on the classical regime, offering a valuable benchmark for energy flux reduction and its extent.