Beam electrons as a source of Hα flare ribbons.

The observations of solar flare onsets show rapid increase of hard and soft X-rays, ultra-violet emission with large Doppler blue shifts associated with plasma upflows, and Hα hydrogen emission with red shifts up to 1-4 Å. Modern radiative hydrodynamic models account well for blue-shifted emission, but struggle to reproduce closely the red-shifted Hα lines. Here we present a joint hydrodynamic and radiative model showing that during the first seconds of beam injection the effects caused by beam electrons can reproduce Hα line profiles with large red-shifts closely matching those observed in a C1.

Magnetic tornadoes as energy channels into the solar corona.

Heating the outer layers of the magnetically quiet solar atmosphere to more than one million kelvin and accelerating the solar wind requires an energy flux of approximately 100 to 300 watts per square metre, but how this energy is transferred and dissipated there is a puzzle and several alternative solutions have been proposed. Braiding and twisting of magnetic field structures, which is caused by the convective flows at the solar surface, was suggested as an efficient mechanism for atmospheric heating. Convectively driven vortex flows that harbour magnetic fields are observed to be abundant in the photosphere (the visible surface of the Sun).