3D Radio and X-Ray Modeling and Data Analysis Software: Revealing Flare Complexity

Abstract

We have undertaken a major enhancement of our IDL-based simulation tools developed earlier for modeling microwave and X-ray emission. The object-based architecture provides an interactive graphical user interface that allows the user to import photospheric magnetic field maps and perform magnetic field extrapolations to almost instantly generate 3D magnetic field models, to investigate the magnetic topology of these models by interactively creating magnetic field lines and associated magnetic flux tubes, to populate the flux tubes with user-defined nonuniform thermal plasma and anisotropic, nonuniform, nonthermal electron distributions; to investigate the spatial and spectral properties of radio and X-ray emission calculated from the model, and to compare the model-derived images and spectra with observational data. The application integrates shared-object libraries containing fast gyrosynchrotron emission codes developed in FORTRAN and C++, soft and hard X-ray codes developed in IDL, a FORTRAN-based potential-field extrapolation routine and an IDL-based linear force free field extrapolation routine. The interactive interface allows users to add any user-defined radiation code that adheres to our interface standards, as well as user-defined magnetic field extrapolation routines. Here we use this tool to analyze a simple single-loop flare and use the model to constrain the 3D structure of the magnetic flaring loop and 3D spatial distribution of the fast electrons inside this loop. We iteratively compute multi-frequency microwave and multi-energy X-ray images from realistic magnetic fluxtubes obtained from an extrapolation of a magnetogram taken prior to the flare, and compare them with imaging data obtained by SDO, NoRH, and RHESSI instruments. We use this event to illustrate use of the tool for general interpretation of solar flares to address disparate problems in solar physics.

12 pages, 11 figures, ApJ accepted

References in corpus (2)

• Comparing magnetic field extrapolations with measurements of magnetic loops
• Spatially-resolved Energetic Electron Properties for the 21 May 2004 Flare from Radio Observations and 3D Simulations

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Origins of the Ambient Solar Wind: Implications for Space Weather
• Quasi-periodic pulsations in solar and stellar flares: an overview of recent results
• From Pseudostreamer Jets to CMEs: Observations of the Breakout Continuum
• Three-dimensional Forward-fit Modeling of the Hard X-Ray and the Microwave Emissions of the 2015 June 22 M6.5 Flare
• Coronal Magnetography of a Simulated Solar Active Region from Microwave Imaging Spectropolarimetry
• Energy Partitions and Evolution in a Purely Thermal Solar Flare
• Forward Modeling of SDO/AIA and X-Ray Emission from a Simulated Flux Rope Ejection
• Simulations of Gyrosynchrotron Microwave Emission from an Oscillating 3D Magnetic Loop
• Direct Imaging of Magnetohydrodynamic Wave Mode Conversion Near a 3D Null Point on the Sun
• A Large-scale Plume in an X-Class Solar Flare
• Spatio-temporal energy partitioning in a non-thermally dominated two-loop solar flare
• Broadband microwave sub-second pulsations in an expanding coronal loop of the 2011 August 10 flare
• Predicting the time variation of radio emission from MHD simulations of a flaring T-Tauri star
• Multi-instrument Comparative Study of Temperature, Number Density, and Emission Measure during the Precursor Phase of a Solar Flare
• Probing Twisted Magnetic Field Using Microwave Observations in an M Class Solar Flare on 11 February, 2014
• Twin Null-Point-Associated Major Eruptive Three-Ribbon Flares with Unusual Microwave Spectra
• Thyr: A Volumetric Ray-Marching Tool for Simulating Microwave Emission