Thinkshop12

Energetics of Chromospheric Flares

Petr Heinzel (Czech Academy of Sciences)

Abstract. Recent investigations do indicate that a significant portion of the flare energy is emitted in the form of continuum radiation. In the flaring chromosphere, the hydrogen recombination continua are dominant, and namely the Balmer continuum discovered in the NUV spectra of IRIS. We will compare these novel observations with radiation-hydrodynamical simulations made with the Flarix code developed at Ondrejov Observatory. Flarix is a 1D time-dependent code having three basic parts: hydrodynamical, particle-transport part which describes the propagation and energy deposit of electron beams, and the non-LTE radiative-transfer part which computes the non-equilibrium ionization and radiation losses. New simulations indicate a dominant role of losses in the hydrogen Balmer continuum, which is important for the global energy balance and can be constrained by new IRIS observations.

Contributed Talk