OBSERVATIONS AND MODELS OF A FLARING LOOP

A. Nindos1, S. M. White1, M. R. Kundu1, D. E. Gary2

1 Astronomy Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

2 Physics Department, NJIT, Newark, NJ 07102

We present a simple small flare which was observed with the VLA at 15 GHz and 5 GHz. Additional spectral data were provided by the OVRO Solar Array at several frequencies between 2 GHz and 15 GHz. At 15 GHz, the flare emission was optically thin and came from the footpoints of the flaring loop; the loop itself was outlined at 5 GHz. Most of the 5 GHz emission was optically thick and its maximum was close to the loop top. The microwave observations were checked against simple one-dimensional inhomogeneous models of the gyrosynchrotron emission. The best fit to the OVRO fluxes was reached with a model flaring loop with an azimuth of about 37° with respect to the east-west direction and with photospheric footpoint magnetic field strength of 820 G. The heights above the solar surface of the two lines of force which formed the loop were 2.6 x 109 cm and 1.9 x 109 cm and the distance between the footpoints was 2.64 x 109 cm. The energy spectral index of the energetic electrons was 3.7 and their density was 2.7 x 107 cm-3. The low and high energy cutoffs of the nonthermal electrons were 10 keV and 400 keV respectively. That model reproduced well the VLA spatial structure if the magnetic field configuration was tilted 10° with respect to the local vertical plane. Thus comparisons between the observations and models provide important information about the three-dimensional structure of the loop geometry. The 5 GHz model profiles showed lower emission above the limbward footpoint of the loop than above the west (diskward) footpoint. That was an optical depth effect associated with the energies of the nonthermal electrons. When the high energy cutoff or the low energy cutoff of the electrons increased, the increase of the optical depth made the 5 GHz emission above the limbward footpoint approximately equal to the emission above the west footpoint.