Non-thermal "Burst-on-Tail" of Long-Duration Solar Event on 26 October 2003

Abstract

Observations of a rare long-duration solar event of GOES class X1.2 from 26 October 2003 are presented. This event showed a pronounced burst of hard X-ray and microwave emission, which was extremely delayed (> 60 min) with respect to the main impulsive phase and did not have any significant response visible in soft X-ray emission. We refer to this phenomenon as a "burst-on-tail". Based on TRACE observations of the growing flare arcade and some simplified estimation, we explain why a reaction of active region plasma to accelerated electrons may change drastically over time. We suggest that, during the "burst-on-tail", non-thermal electrons were injected into magnetic loops of larger spatial scale than during the impulsive phase bursts, thus resulting in much smaller values of plasma temperature and emission measure in their coronal volume, and hence little soft X-ray flux. The nature of the long gap between the main impulsive phase and the "burst-on-tail" is, however, still an open question.