Presentation #126.12 in the session Explosive Energy Release Processes in the Solar Corona and Earth’s Magnetosphere — Poster Session.
Individual peaks in solar flare light curves can be modeled as an injection of particles followed by an exponential decay caused by various loss processes such as collisions, escape from the source, or other mechanisms to quench the emission. It is often of interest to quantify the decay time and compare with expectations from theory to investigate particle transport and energy-loss mechanisms, but for multi-peaked impulsive phases with overlapping injections and differing decay times these can be difficult to measure. This talk demonstrates software currently under development that helps to automate the selection and characterization of impulsive flare time profiles using least squares fitting of multiple models with as many as four overlapping peaks modeled as Gaussian injections and exponential decays. The software was developed to fit spatially-resolved time profiles of microwave radio emission from the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA), but should be adaptable to other types of emission such as hard X-rays and type III radio bursts. Possible interpretations of the fit parameters as physical constraints on flares will be discussed for some sample EOVSA events, such as the relation of these models and trapping times to the magnetic field geometry. Another application of the software is type III bursts observed with the FIELDS instrument on board Parker Solar Probe. The traditional method of determining the duration of a type III burst is by fitting a standard gaussian to the time profile and using the HWHM as the burst duration. However, the profile of a type III is more complicated than that. The software allows fitting these profiles to separate and better quantify the type III beam duration and decay parameters.