Particle Kinetics and Dynamics in Flaring Atmospheres Leading to Sunquakes

This book presents an extended summary of the author publications describing how particles of the solar and interplanetary neutral plasma are accelerated to sub-relativistic energies during magnetic reconnection in solar flares and interplanetary space. The high energy particles are shown to form electric circuits in solar flares from precipitating and returning particles. This circuit exists as long as the reconnection process exists that defines a flare duration. The heating of flaring atmospheres by precipitating particles (electrons, protons or mixed beams) is shown to cause hydrodynamic responses of flaring atmospheres. These responses lead to explosive or mild evaporation of the chromospheric plasma into the corona and formation of fast supersonic hydrodynamic shocks travelling into the solar interior. These dynamic processes are investigated in the observed hard X-ray and soft X-ray, and microwave and optical emissions in the flaring events with sunquakes. The shocks are found to penetrate into the interior beneath flares and become accountable for the formation of seismic responses of solar flares seen as ripples on the photosphere, or sunquakes.

About the Author :
Prof Valentina Zharkova is Professor Emerita at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and a Director of the research company ZVS Research Enterprise Ltd., London, UK. She obtained her BSc and MSc in Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at Kyiv National University, Ukraine, and did a PhD in Astrophysics at the Main Astronomical Observatory, Kyiv, Ukraine. She progressed from Junior Researcher (1984) to Lecturer (2000), Reader (2002) and Professor (2005). Her career progress includes working at Kyiv National University (Ukraine), Glasgow University (UK), Bradford University (UK) and Northumbria University (UK). Dr Serhii Zharkov graduated from Kyiv Lyceum No. 145, Ukraine, and is a 4-time winner of the Maths Olympics of Ukraine and runner up of the Math Olympics of the USSR. Dr Zharkov holds a BA (Hons) and MA from Cambridge University, UK, and a PhD in Differential Geometry at Glasgow University, UK. After doing research in Solar Physics, Helioseismology and Computer Vision through post-doctoral research associate positions at Sheffield University, UK and Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, UK, he is now a Lecturer at the University of Hull, UK. Dr Zharkov has over 60 publications, including 3 in the Nature group journals.