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Solar flares are explosive releases of magnetic energy. Hard X-ray (HXR) flare emission originates from both hot (millions of Kelvin) plasma and nonthermal accelerated particles, giving insight into flare energy release. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) utilizes direct-focusing optics to attain much higher sensitivity in the HXR range than that of previous indirect imagers. This paper presents 11 NuSTAR microflares from two active regions (AR 12671 on 2017 August 21 and AR 12712 on 2018 May 29). The temporal, spatial, and energetic properties of each are discussed in context with previously published HXR brightenings. They are seen to display several "large flare" properties, such as impulsive time profiles and earlier peak times in higher-energy HXRs. For two events where the active region background could be removed, microflare emission did not display spatial complexity; differing NuSTAR energy ranges had equivalent emission centroids. Finally, spectral fitting showed a high-energy excess over a single thermal model in all events. This excess was consistent with additional higher-temperature plasma volumes in 10/11 microflares and only with an accelerated particle distribution in the last. Previous NuSTAR studies focused on one or a few microflares at a time, making this the first to collectively examine a sizable number of events. Additionally, this paper introduces an observed variation in the NuSTAR gain unique to the extremely low livetime (

We present X-ray imaging spectroscopy of one of the weakest active region (AR) microflares ever studied. The microflare occurred at ~11:04 UT on 2018 September 9 and we studied it using the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) and the Solar Dynamic Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA). The microflare is observed clearly in 2.5-7 keV with NuSTAR and in Fe XVIII emission derived from the hotter component of the 94 Å SDO/AIA channel. We estimate the event to be three orders of magnitude lower than a GOES A class microflare with an energy of 1.1 × 1026 erg. It reaches temperatures of 6.7 MK with an emission measure of 8.0 × 1043 cm-3. Non-thermal emission is not detected but we instead determine upper limits to such emission. We present the lowest thermal energy estimate for an AR microflare in literature, which is at the lower limits of what is still considered an X-ray microflare.

We report for the first time the detection of thermal free–free emission from post-flare loops at 34 GHz in images from the Nobeyama Radioheliograph. We studied eight loops, seven of which were from regions with an extremely strong coronal magnetic field reported by Fedenev et al. Loop emission was observed in a wide range of wavelength bands, up to soft X-rays, confirming their multitemperature structure and was associated with noise storm emission in metric λ. The comparison of the 17 GHz emission with that at 34 GHz, after a calibration correction of the latter, showed that the emission was optically thin at both frequencies. We describe the structure and evolution of the loops and we computed their density, obtaining values for the top of the loops between 1 and 6 × 1010 cm−3, noticeably varying from one loop to another and in the course of the evolution of the same loop system; these values have only a weak dependence on the assumed temperature, 2 × 106 K in our case, as we are in the optically thin regime. Our density values are above those reported from EUV observations, which go up to about 1010 cm−3. This difference could be due to the fact that different emitting regions are sampled in the two domains and/or due to the more accurate diagnostics in the radio range, which do not suffer from inherent uncertainties arising from abundances and non-LTE excitation/ionization equilibria. We also estimated the magnetic field in the loop tops to be in the range of 10–30 G. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the incidence of coherent emission in solar radio bursts, using a revised catalog of 3800 solar radio bursts observed by the Nobeyama Radio Polarimeters from 1988 to 2023. We focus on the 1.0 and 2.0 GHz data, where radio fluxes of order 1010 Jy have been observed. Previous work has suggested that these bursts are due to electron cyclotron maser (ECM) emission. In at least one well-studied case, the bright emission at 1 GHz consists of narrowband spikes of millisecond duration. Coherent emission at 1 GHz can be distinguished from traditional incoherent gyrosynchrotron flare emission based on the radio spectrum: Gyrosynchrotron emission at 1 GHz usually has a spectrum rising with frequency, so bursts in which 1 GHz is stronger than higher-frequency measurements are unlikely to be incoherent gyrosynchrotron. Based on this criterion, it is found that for bursts exceeding 100 sfu, three-quarters of all bursts at 1 GHz and half of all 2 GHz bursts have a dominant coherent emission component, assumed to be ECM. The majority of the very bright bursts at 1 GHz are highly circularly polarized, consistent with a coherent emission mechanism, but not always 100% polarized. The frequency range from 1 to 2 GHz is heavily utilized for terrestrial applications, and these results are relevant for understanding the extreme flux levels that may impact such applications. Further, they provide a reference for comparison with the study of ECM emission from other stars and potentially exoplanets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identify a set of ∼100 "cold" solar flares and perform a statistical analysis of them in the microwave range. Cold flares are characterized by a weak thermal response relative to nonthermal emission. This work is a follow-up of a previous statistical study of cold flares, which focused on hard X-ray emission to quantify the flare nonthermal component. Here, we focus on the microwave emission. The thermal response is evaluated by the soft X-ray emission measured by the GOES X-ray sensors. We obtain spectral parameters of the flare gyrosynchrotron emission and reveal patterns of their temporal evolution. The main results of the previous statistical study are confirmed: as compared to a "mean" flare, the cold flares have shorter durations, higher spectral peak frequencies, and harder spectral indices above the spectral peak. Nonetheless, there are some cold flares with moderate and low peak frequencies. In the majority of cold flares, we find evidence of the Razin effect in the microwave spectra, indicative of rather dense flaring loops. We discuss the results in the context of the electron acceleration efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present evidence that a magnetic flux rope was formed before a coronal mass ejection (CME) and its associated long-duration flare during a pair of preceding confined eruptions and associated impulsive flares in a compound event in NOAA Active Region 12371. Extreme-ultraviolet images and the extrapolated nonlinear force-free field show that the first two (impulsive) flares, SOL2015-06-21T01:42, result from the confined eruption of highly sheared low-lying flux, presumably a seed flux rope. The eruption spawns a vertical current sheet, where magnetic reconnection creates flare ribbons and loops, a nonthermal microwave source, and a sigmoidal hot channel that can only be interpreted as a magnetic flux rope. Until the subsequent long-duration flare, SOL2015-06-21T02:36, the sigmoid's elbows expand, while its center remains stationary, suggesting nonequilibrium but not yet instability. The "flare reconnection" during the confined eruptions acts like "tether-cutting reconnection" whose flux feeding of the rope leads to instability. The subsequent full eruption is seen as an accelerated rise of the entire hot channel, seamlessly evolving into the fast halo CME. Both the confined and ejective eruptions are consistent with the onset of the torus instability in the dipped decay index profile that results from the region's two-scale magnetic structure. We suggest that the formation or enhancement of a nonequilibrium but stable flux rope by confined eruptions is a generic process occurring prior to many CMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents initial results from a statistical study of solar microwave and hard X-ray flares jointly observed over the past two solar cycles by the Nobeyama Radio Polarimeters, the Nobeyama Radio Heliograph, and the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager. As has been previously demonstrated, the microwave (17 GHz and 34 GHz) peak flux shows a linear correlation with the nonthermal hard X-ray bremsstrahlung peak emission seen above 50 keV. The correlation holds for the entire rise phase of each individual burst, while the decay phases tend to show more extended emission at microwaves than is generally attributed to particle trapping. While the correlation is highly significant (coefficient of 0.92) and holds over more than four orders of magnitude, individual flares can be above or below the fitted line by an average factor of about 2. By restricting the flare selection to source morphologies with the radio emission from the top of the flare loop, the correlation tightens significantly, with a correlation coefficient increasing to 0.99 and the scatter reduced to a factor of 1.3. These findings corroborate the assumption that gyrosynchrotron microwave and hard X-ray bremsstrahlung emissions are produced by the same flare-accelerated electron population. The extent of the linear correlation over four orders of magnitude suggests that magnetic field strengths within nonthermal 17 GHz sources are surprisingly similar over a wide range of flare sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio and optical observations of the evolution of flare-associated phenomena have shown an initial and rapid burst at 0.4 THz only followed subsequently by a localized chromospheric heating producing an Hα brightening with later heating of the whole active region. A major instability occurred several minutes later producing one impulsive burst at microwaves only, associated with an M2.0 GOES X-ray flare that exhibited the main Hα brightening at the same site as the first flash. The possible association between long-enduring time profiles at soft X-rays, microwaves, Hα, and sub-THz wavelengths is discussed. In the decay phase, the Hα movie shows a disrupting magnetic arch Structure ejecting dark, presumably chromospheric, material upward. The time sequence of events suggests genuine interdependent and possibly non-thermal instabilities triggering phenomena, with concurrent active region plasma heating and material ejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]