Speaker
Description
Solar flare simulations are often driven by electron beam parameters inferred from X-ray observations. One important input is the electron beam flux, which depends on both the non-thermal power and the assumed flare footpoint area. In this work, we compare footpoint areas estimated from STIX X-ray imaging with those measured from higher-resolution EUI observations for a Solar Orbiter flare. While STIX provides the spectral information needed to estimate the non-thermal electron power, EUI allows the flare footpoints to be constrained on smaller spatial scales. Using EUI imaging, we find footpoint areas of more than one order of magnitude smaller than values often assumed in previous flare simulations. These smaller areas lead to larger electron beam fluxes when used as inputs for RADYN simulations. We compare simulations driven by different footpoint area assumptions and examine how the resulting atmosphere changes. To connect the models back to observations, we synthesize Fe IX and Fe X emission from the RADYN outputs and compare the modeled EUV response to the EUI flare evolution.