120. NuSTAR observations of weak microflares

Author: Kristopher Cooper, Iain Hannah (University of Glasgow).

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What are microflares?

Solar flares release stored magnetic energy into mass flows, heating, and particle acceleration throughout the Sun’s atmosphere and occur in active regions (ARs) [1]. Small flares occur more frequently as energy release decreases with a flare frequency distribution consistent with a power-law. This allows for the possibility that the weaker flares actually contribute more net energy to the solar atmosphere than their brighter, but less frequent, counterparts. The energy release of flares spans decades of energies with microflares having energies between 1026–1028 erg and observed to have <10-6 W m-2 in GOES (1–8 Å) soft X-ray flux, with an A-class microflare being on the order 10-8 W m-2 [2,3]. We use the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR, [4]), an astrophysical focussing X-ray imaging spectrometer capable of observing the Sun, to probe these incredibly weak flares that are often very difficult to identify with other, even solar dedicated, instruments. For an overview of all NuSTAR solar observation campaigns and publications please visit Iain Hannah’s GitHub page.

NuSTAR observation overview: 2018 September 9 and 10

NuSTAR performed six hour-long solar observations on 2018 September 9 and 10, initially targeting a region already observed by the FOXSI-3 sounding rocket [5]. However, we find that AR12721, appearing on September 8, dominates NuSTAR’s field of view (FOV) shown in Figure 1 (panel e) [6]. Creating lightcurves of the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) AR emission (Figure 1, panel a), we find that there is no clear behaviour indicative of a microflare until we produce an FeXVIII proxy (panel b, [7]). Using the NuSTAR X-ray lightcurve, in combination with the FeXVIII proxy, we identify 10 microflares across both days with 7 taking place on September 9 (panel c). None of the NuSTAR observed microflares were easily visible in the corresponding GOES data itself and so were estimated to be GOES sub-A class from NuSTAR spectral analysis. During NuSTAR’s second orbit (10:26–11:26 UTC), AR12721 produces the brightest and weakest NuSTAR microflares of these data and are labelled as microflare 3 and 4, respectively.

Figure 1. SDO/AIA, including FeXVIII proxy, and NuSTAR lightcurves from AR12721 on 2018 September 9 (panels a–c). The areas used to obtain the NuSTAR and SDO/AIA time profiles cover the full AR and are shown by the box regions in panels d and e. The SDO/AIA 94 Å image (panel d) is taken from the time indicated by the time stamp and vertical, dotted green line in panel c while the FOV NuSTAR image (panel e) shows the integrated X-ray >2.5 keV emission over the second orbit. The shaded regions indicate NuSTAR’s eclipse with any gaps in the data outside of these grey periods being due to SAA passage. The channel of the lightcurve emission is displayed at the top of each time profile with a scaling factor, if required. The NuSTAR lightcurve and image is livetime corrected and the numbers indicate the identified microflares.

Microflare 3: potential non-thermal signatures

The brightest NuSTAR microflare from these data was easily separated into a rise, peak, and decay time for further investigation via spectral analysis (Figure 2, [6]). Microflare 3 occurred in isolation and so a pre-flare time was also obtainable. We find that the FeXVIII proxy matches the lower X-ray range well (2.5–4 keV) while the higher X-ray energy range (4–10 keV) is more impulsive. This could indicate the existence of hot material at the very start of the microflare or the presence of non-thermal emission. During the pre-flare time, we find typical hot AR core temperatures at ~4 MK with the rise phase being the hottest reaching temperatures >7 MK. The microflare then progresses to show a slight, general decrease in temperature while increasing the emission measure by almost an order of magnitude. Microflare 3 is estimated to have an A0.1 GOES equivalent class.

Figure 2. The FeXVIII proxy emission integrated over microflare 3 (left panel). The black contours show the region used to determine the FeXVIII time profile (blue, right panel). NuSTAR 2.5–4 keV (purple) and 4–10 keV (red) emission is integrated over the full AR with 10 s binning.

Inspecting the spectral profile of microflare 3’s rise time (~10:29–10:32 UTC), we observe an excess in the residuals >7 keV. This would suggest an additional model is needed to accurately represent the observed spectrum. Fitting an extra thermal model we find that unphysically high temperatures are required and so we then fit a power-law model to represent potential non-thermal emission (Figure 3, [6]). The power-law model removes the residual excess and estimates a non-thermal energy release of the same order of magnitude needed to produce the corresponding thermal model parameters.

Figure 3. Microflare 3 rise phase spectrum (10:28:30–10:31:30 UTC) fitted with the same fixed pre-flare component (blue) with one thermal model (red) and an additional broken power-law model (orange) to represent emission from non-thermal electrons.

Microflare 4: a wee flare

The weakest NuSTAR X-ray microflare to be observed in September 2018 was microflare 4 occurring at ~11:04 UTC [6,8]. Like microflare 3, microflare 4 occurred in isolation and a pre-flare time could be identified. Although its emission is very faint microflare 4 still measures 10–20 arcseconds across in SDO/AIA (Figure 4, [8]). Performing spectral fitting on the microflare time (~11:03–11:05 UTC), and fixing the model that best represents the pre-flare emission, we find that this incredibly faint microflare still reaches temperatures >6.5 MK and has a GOES class equivalent of approximately a thousandth of an A-class (Figure 5, [8]). The estimated instantaneous thermal energy release from microflare 4, at 1.1×1026 erg, makes it the weakest X-ray microflare from an AR currently in literature.

Figure 4. SDO/AIA FeXVIII proxy image with 2.5–4 keV (purple) and 4–7 keV (red) NuSTAR contours for the microflare time with the pre-flare subtracted; i.e., the EUV and X-ray microflare excess.
Figure 5. Thermal model fits of NuSTAR emission during the pre-flare (left panel) and microflare time (right panel). The pre-flare spectrum fit (blue) is used as a fixed component for the total microflare spectrum fit with an additional thermal model (red).

Unlike microflare 3, microflare 4’s spectrum is well represented with two thermal models with no detectable count excess. However, non-thermal emission could still be present, but hidden, within the noise of the data where we have counts and consistent with a null detection where we do not. Investigating the non-thermal models that fit these criteria, we find that there are non-thermal upper limits that could provide the required heating rate to the microflare.

Conclusions

  • Sensitive imaging and spectroscopic X-ray observations are crucial when investigating incredibly weak solar microflares as they are inconspicuous at many other wavelengths.
  • Although the NuSTAR X-ray microflares are extremely faint, sub-A class equivalent flares are not necessarily spatially small and can reach very hot temperatures.
  • Sub-A class microflares can have very strong evidence of, or can be consistent with, non-thermal emission with microflare 3 being one of the weakest non-thermal X-ray microflares in the literature.
  • With NuSTAR, an observatory that is not optimised for solar observation, we are approaching events close to nanoflare energies as opposed to microflare energies.

All microflares NuSTAR observed on 2018 September 9 and 10 are thoroughly discussed in [6], with microflare 4 studied further still in [8].

References