Flares Producing Well-organized Post-flare Arcades (Slinkies) Have Early Precursors

Abstract

Exploding loop systems producing X-ray flares often, but not always, bifurcate into a long-living, well-organized system of multi-threaded loop arcades resembling solenoidal slinkies. The physical conditions that cause or prevent this process are not known. To address this problem, we examined most of the major (X-class) flares that occurred during the last decade and found that the flares that bifurcate into long-living slinky arcades have different signatures than those that do not "produce" such structures. The most striking difference is that, in all cases of slinky formation, GOES high energy proton flux becomes significantly enhanced 10-24 hr before the flare occurs. No such effect was found prior to the "non-slinky" flares. This fact may be associated with the difference between energy production by a given active region and the amount of energy required to bring the entire system into the form of well-organized, self-similar loop arcades. As an example illustrating the process of post-flare slinky formation, we present observations taken with the Hinode satellite, in several wavelengths, showing a time sequence of pre-flare and flare activity, followed by the formation of dynamically stable, well-organized structures. One of the important features revealed is that post-flare coronal slinky formation is preceded by scale invariant structure formation in the underlying chromosphere/transition region. We suggest that the observed regularities can be understood within the framework of self-organized critical dynamics characterized by scale invariant structure formation with critical parameters largely determined by energy saturation level. The observed regularities per se may serve as a long-term precursor of strong flares and may help to study predictability of system behavior.