Investigation of the observed solar coronal plasma in EUV and X-rays in non-equilibrium ionization state

  • Lee, Jin-Yi (Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Raymond, John C. (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) ;
  • Reeves, Katharine K. (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) ;
  • Shen, Chengcai (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) ;
  • Moon, Yong-Jae (Kyung Hee University)
  • Published : 2018.05.08

Abstract

During a major solar eruption, the erupting plasma is possibly out of the equilibrium ionization state because of its rapid heating or cooling. The non-equilibrium ionization process is important in a rapidly evolving system where the thermodynamical time scale is shorter than the ionization or recombination time scales. We investigate the effects of non-equilibrium ionization on EUV and X-ray observations by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board Solar Dynamic Observatory and X-ray Telescope (XRT) on board Hinode. For the investigation, first, we find the emissivities for all the lines of ions of elements using CHIANTI 8.07, and then we find the temperature responses multiplying the emissivities by the effective area for each AIA and XRT passband. Second, we obtain the ion fractions using a time-dependent ionization model (Shen et al. 2015), which uses an eigenvalue method, for all the lines of ion, as a function of temperature, and a characteristic time scale, $n_et$, where $n_e$ and t are density and time, respectively. Lastly, the ion fractions are multiplied to the temperature response for each passband, which results in a 2D grid for each combination of temperature and the characteristic time scale. This is the set of passband responses for plasma that is rapidly ionized in a current sheet or a shock. We investigate an observed event which has a relatively large uncertainty in an analysis using a differential emission measure method assuming equilibrium ionization state. We verify whether the observed coronal plasmas are in non-equilibrium or equilibrium ionization state using the passband responses.

Keywords