The Origin of the Solar Flare Waiting-Time Distribution
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An Experimental Protocol for Femtosecond NIR/UV - XUV Pump-Probe Experiments with Free-Electron Lasers
Published on: October 23, 2018
Abstract:
It was recently pointed out that the distribution of times between solar flares (the flare waiting-time distribution) follows a power law for long waiting times. Based on 25 years of soft X-ray flares observed by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite instruments, it is shown that (1) the waiting-time distribution of flares is consistent with a time-dependent Poisson process and (2) the fraction of time the Sun spends with different flaring rates approximately follows an exponential distribution. The second result is a new phenomenological law for flares. It is shown analytically how the observed power-law behavior of the waiting times originates in the exponential distribution of flaring rates. These results are argued to be consistent with a nonstationary avalanche model for flares.
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