| Description: | The impulsive phase of a solar flare marks the epoch of rapid conversion of free energy stored in the pre-flare coronal magnetic field. A large fraction of that free energy accelerates a coronal mass ejection into space, but hard X-ray observations imply that up to 50% of flare energy overall is converted to the kinetic energy of mildly relativistic electrons (10-100 keV). The long-standing view of flares is that these particles are the agents which transport energy through the solar corona to the lower solar atmosphere during a flare. In this seminar, I will outline the current state of our understanding of this process from both an observational and a theoretical standpoint. I will also introduce a new model for flare energy release, inspired in part by magnetospheric physics, in which energy is transported through the flaring corona not by particles but by large-scale Alfvenic pulses. |
