Abstract Details

Name: Sangeetha CR
Affiliation: IUCAA, Pune
Conference ID: ASI2019_508
Title : Magnetic and Kinetic helicity changes during M-class X-ray flares
Authors and Co-Authors : Sangeetha C. R., Durgesh Tripathi, Ravindra B., Sargam Mulay
Abstract Type : Oral
Abstract Category : Sun and the Solar System
Abstract : The enormous amount of energy released during flares and their signatures have been observed over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. But the physics behind this is still not fully understood and the questions remain such as, what is the trigger for the flares, where do these flaring active regions get the energy from and their contribution to the coronal heating. In this work, we studied the changes observed in the photospheric magnetic and kinetic helicities before and during five M-class X-ray flares using the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The flare evolution was studied using 193 and 1600 Ang channels of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument. We investigated whether these physical quantities have any contribution to the trigering of flares. We have found that the magnetic helicity was decreasing where as the kinetic helicity was increasing in the active region before the flare starts. During the flares, a significant changes in these quantities were not observed. Since the magnetic helicity is a conserved quantity, the increase in the kinetic helicity could be due to the transfer of magnetic helicity to the fluid motions. These physical quantities provided important insights into our understanding of solar flares and could be used for flare prediction.