Solar Flares

Multi-scale modeling that connects simulations and solar flare X-ray/radio observations.

Modeling electron acceleration 3D flare simulations

Three-dimensional volume rending of the spatially dependent electron distributions (Li et al. 2025).

active

We integrate kinetic simulations, global MHD simulations, and energetic-particle transport solvers to explain how solar flares accelerate electrons/ions and how those populations light up hard X-ray and microwave observables.

What’s happening

  • Integrated flare framework — Coupling reconnection-layer kinetics, termination shocks, and large-scale transport into a single pipeline that spans <1 m to >10^8 m.
  • GPU-accelerated modeling — Leveraging GPU-accelerated energetic particle solvers to efficiently explore flare acceleration and transport.
  • Synthetic observables — Generating hard X-ray and microwave emission maps directly from modeled electron distributions for comparison with RHESSI, EOVSA, and FOXSI.
  • SEP handoff — Feeding flare-accelerated spectra into eruption-scale transport models used in the companion SEPs project.
  • Energy conversion and electron acceleration in 3D flares
    X. Li et al. — ApJ (2025) — read
  • Modeling Electron Acceleration and Transport in the Early Impulsive Phase (2017 Sep 10)
    X. Li et al. — ApJ (2022) — read
  • Compression Acceleration of Protons and Heavier Ions
    G. Murtas, X. Li, & F. Guo — ApJ (2024) — read

This effort ties directly into the Solar Energetic Particles project; reach out if you want to test diagnostics, add observational constraints, or explore joint modeling runs.