We examine empirical atmospheric structures that are consistent with enhanced white-light continuum emission in solar flares. This continuum can be produced either by hydrogen bound-free emission in an enhanced region in the upper chromosphere, or by H-emission in an enhanced region around the temperature minimum. In the former case, weak Paschen jumps in the spectrum will be present, with the spectrum being dominated by a strong Balmer continuum, while in the latter case the spectrum exhibits a weaker, fiat enhancement over the entire visible spectrum.
We find that when proper account is taken of radiative backwarming processes, the two enhanced atmospheric regions above are not independent, in that irradiation by Balmer continuum photons from the upper chromosphere creates sufficient heating around the temperature minimum to account for the temperature enhancements there. Thus the problem of main phase white-light flare production reduces to one of creating temperature enhancements of order 104 K in the upper chromosphere; radiative backwarming then naturally accounts for the enhancements of order 100 K around the temperature minimum.
Heating by electron and proton bombardment, and by XUV irradiation from above, are then considered as candidates for creating the necessary enhancements in the upper chromosphere. We find that electron bombardment can be ruled out, whereas bombardment by protons in the few-MeV energy range is a viable candidate, but one without strong observational support. The XUV irradiation hypothesis is examined by incorporating it self-consistently into the PANDORA radiative transfer algorithm used to construct the empirical model atmospheres; we find that the introduction of XUV radiation, with flux and spectrum appropriate to white-light flare events, does indeed produce sufficient radiative heating in the upper chromosphere to balance the radiative losses associated with the required temperature enhancements.
In summary, we find that the radiative coupling of (i) the upper chromosphere and temperature minimum regions (through Balmer continuum photons) and (ii)the transition region and upper chromosphere (through XUV photons) can account for white-light emission in solar flares.