Authors: J. T. Dahlin (GSFC), S. K. Antiochos (GSFC), C. R. DeVore (GSFC), J. Qiu (Montana State)
J. T. Dahlin, S. K. Antiochos, J. Qiu, C. R. DeVore
Solar flares are explosive space weather events that rapidly convert stored magnetic energy into bulk motion, plasma heating, and particle acceleration. Flare energy release is understood to be powered by magnetic reconnection, an ubiquitous plasma process underlying many explosive phenomena throughout the heliosphere, from the solar corona to planetary magnetospheres. Understanding the structure and dynamics of the magnetic reconnection that powers flares is critical for predicting the energy release. In particular, the amount of energy transferred to energetic particles is thought to be highly dependent on whether the reconnection is primarily turbulent (e.g., plasmoid dominated) or instead laminar. We present new high-resolution MHD simulations of three-dimensional reconnection in an eruptive flare and compare the results to recent data. Although flare reconnection is challenging to observe directly in the corona, highly detailed constraints on its dynamics can be obtained from observations of flare ribbons that track the chromospheric footpoints of newly reconnected field lines. The analogues of flare ribbons in our simulations are identified by tracking discontinuous changes in field-line magnetic connectivity due to the reconnection. In our highest-resolution calculations, we find that these ribbon analogues are highly structured and exhibit many ‘whorl’ patterns that are linked to turbulent plasmoids in the reconnecting current sheet. Such flare ribbon fine structure therefore reveals crucial information about the fundamental turbulent vs. laminar nature of the reconnection. Plasmoid-driven particle acceleration models would therefore predict co-location of energetic particle signatures with plasmoid-associated ribbon fine structure. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding explosive energy release in the solar corona.