Relationship between high-energy physical phenomena on the sun and in astrophysics

✍ Scribed by Stirling A. Colgate

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 940 KB
• Volume: 118
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-0938
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00148586

✦ Synopsis

High energy phenomena on the surface of the Sun are manifestations of part of the solar dynamo cycle. Convection and magnetic field give rise to unstable, twisted flux loops that become solar flares when the resistive tearing mode proceeds to the nonlinear limit. If such twisted flux loops did not dissipate rapidly due to an enhanced resistivity, then the dynamo would not work. The act of dissipation leads to intense heating and acceleration leading to X-rays and accelerated particles. The particles in turn give rise to hard X-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, and solar cosmic rays. In high-energy astrophysics such phenomena occur in accretion disks around compact objects like black holes in quasars and SS433. The resulting acceleration may explain the observed extremely high-energy cosmic rays of up to 1020 eV and the high-energy gamma rays of 10 ~2 to 10 ~5 eV. These high energies are more readily explained by acceleration E parallel to B as opposed to stochastic shock acceleration. The anisotropy and localization of gamma rays from solar flares potentially may indicate which mechanism is prevalent.