We investigate the occurrence of slipping magnetic reconnection, chromospheric evaporation, and coronal loop dynamics in the 2014 September 10 X-class flare. The slipping reconnection is found to be present throughout the flare from its early phase. Flare loops are seen to slip in opposite directions towards both ends of the ribbons. Velocities of 20-40 km s −1 are found within time windows where the slipping is well resolved. The warm coronal loops exhibit expanding and contracting motions that are interpreted as displacements due to the growing flux rope that subsequently erupts. This flux rope existed and erupted before the onset of apparent coronal implosion. This indicates that the energy release proceeds by slipping reconnection and not via coronal implosion. The slipping reconnection leads to changes in the geometry of the observed structures at the IRIS slit position, from flare loop top to the footpoints in the ribbons. This results in variations of the observed velocities of chromospheric evaporation in the early flare phase. Finally, it is found that the precursor signatures including localized EUV brightenings as well as non-thermal X-ray emission are signatures of the flare itself, progressing from the early phase towards the impulsive phase, with the tether-cutting being provided by the slipping reconnection. The dynamics of both the flare and outlying coronal loops is found to be consistent with the predictions of the standard solar flare model in 3D.

We present the results of 1D hydrodynamic simulations of coronal loops which are subject to nanoflares, caused by either in-situ thermal heating, or non-thermal electrons (NTE) beams. The synthesized intensity and Doppler shifts can be directly compared with IRIS and AIA observations of rapid variability in the transition region (TR) of coronal loops, associated with transient coronal heating. We find that NTE with high enough low-energy cutoff (E C ) deposit energy in the lower TR and chromosphere causing blueshifts (up to ∼ 20 km/s) in the IRIS Si IV lines, which thermal conduction cannot reproduce. The E C threshold value for the blueshifts depends on the total energy of the events (≈ 5 keV for 10 24 ergs, up to 15 keV for 10 25 ergs). The observed footpoint emission intensity and flows, combined with the simulations, can provide constraints on both the energy of the heating event and E C . The response of the loop plasma to nanoflares depends crucially on the electron density: significant Si IV intensity enhancements and flows are observed only for initially low-density loops (< 10 9 cm −3 ). This provides a possible explanation of the relative scarcity of observations of significant moss variability. While the TR response to single heating episodes can be clearly observed, the predicted coronal emission (AIA 94Å) for single strands is below current detectability, and can only be observed when several strands are heated closely in time. Finally, we show that the analysis of the IRIS Mg II chromospheric lines can help further constrain the properties of the heating mechanisms.

We present a study of the X2-class flare which occurred on 2014 October 27 and was observed with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on board the Hinode satellite. Thanks to the high cadence and spatial resolution of the IRIS and EIS instruments, we are able to compare simultaneous observations of the Fe XXI1354.08 Åand Fe XXIII263.77 Åhigh-temperature emission (10 MK) in the flare ribbon during the chromospheric evaporation phase. We find that IRIS observes completely blueshifted Fe XXIline profiles, up to 200 km s −1 during the rise phase of the flare, indicating that the site of the plasma upflows is resolved by IRIS. In contrast, the Fe XXIIIline is often asymmetric, which we interpret as being due to the lower spatial resolution of EIS. Temperature estimates from SDO/AIA and Hinode/XRT show that hot emission (log(T[K]) >7.2) is first concentrated at the footpoints before filling the loops. Density-sensitive lines from IRIS and EIS give estimates of electron number density of 10 12 cm −3 in the transition region lines and 10 10 cm −3 in the coronal lines during the impulsive phase. In order to compare the observational results against theoretical predictions, we have run a simulation of a flare loop undergoing heating using the HYDRAD 1D hydro code. We find that the simulated plasma parameters are close to the observed values that are obtained with IRIS, Hinode, and AIA. These results support an electron beam heating model rather than a purely thermal conduction model as the driving mechanism for this flare.

The intensity of the O iv 2s 2 2p 2 P-2s2p 2 4 P and S iv 3 s 2 3p 2 P-3s 3p 2 4 P intercombination lines around 1400 Å observed with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) provide a useful tool to diagnose the electron number density (N e ) in the solar transition region plasma. We measure the electron number density in a variety of solar features observed by IRIS, including an active region (AR) loop, plage and brightening, and the ribbon of the 22-June-2015 M 6.5 class flare. By using the emissivity ratios of O iv and S iv lines, we find that our observations are consistent with the emitting plasma being near isothermal (logT [K] ≈ 5) and iso-density (N e ≈ 10 10.6 cm −3 ) in the AR loop. Moreover, high electron number densities (N e ≈ 10 13 cm −3 ) are obtained during the impulsive phase of the flare by using the S iv line ratio. We note that the S iv lines provide a higher range of density sensitivity than the O iv lines. Finally, we investigate the effects of high densities (N e 10 11 cm −3 ) on the ionization balance. In particular, the fractional ion abundances are found to be shifted towards lower temperatures for high densities compared to the low density case. We also explored the effects of a non-Maxwellian electron distribution on our diagnostic method.

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