Speaker
Description
First Name: Andrea F.
Last Name: Battaglia
Affiliation: IRSOL, Switzerland
All Authors: Andrea F. Battaglia, Gelu M. Nita, Gregory D. Fleishman, Yingjie Zhu, J. F. Drake, Haotian Da, Mark Swisdak, Surajit Mondal, Bin Chen, Svetlana Berdyugina, and Renzo Ramelli
Abstract: Standard solar flare models typically invoke reconnection from a single current layer formed by the classic anti-parallel arrangement of magnetic field lines in the corona. Through Solar Orbiter/STIX observations of hard microflares combined with particle-in-cell simulations, we report on efficient electron acceleration from the interaction of two current layers in sunspots, which energy release rate is faster than the classic single current reconnection of the standard model. These current layers form when a sunspot intrusion with strong horizontal magnetic fields penetrates the vertical field lines of the sunspot umbra. Both the mechanism of dual current layer reconnection and the sunspot environment provide new insights into particle energization in flares, revealing a mechanism for efficiently accelerating particles to high energies.