Dear all,
you might be interested in the following paper that has just been published on Science: "Evidence of non-thermal particles in coronal loops heated impulsively by nanoflares" It can be downloaded from astro-ph: http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.6130 or directly from the Science pages: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6207/1255724 The abstract is below.
cheers, Paola
Abstract: The physical processes causing energy exchange between the Sun's hot corona and its cool lower atmosphere remain poorly understood. The chromosphere and transition region (TR) form an interface region between the surface and the corona that is highly sensitive to the coronal heating mechanism. High-resolution observations with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) reveal rapid variability (~20 to 60 seconds) of intensity and velocity on small spatial scales (?500 kilometers) at the footpoints of hot and dynamic coronal loops. The observations are consistent with numerical simulations of heating by beams of nonthermal electrons, which are generated in small impulsive (?30 seconds) heating events called "coronal nanoflares." The accelerated electrons deposit a sizable fraction of their energy (?10^25 erg) in the chromosphere and TR. Our analysis provides tight constraints on the properties of such electron beams and new diagnostics for their presence in the nonflaring corona.