Statistical Investigation of the Kinematic and Thermal Properties of Supra-arcade Downflows Observed During a Solar Flare

Abstract

Supra-arcade downflows (SADs) are dark structures descending towards post-reconnection flare loops observed in extreme ultraviolet or X-ray observations and are closely related to magnetic reconnection during solar flares. Due to the lack of statistical study on SADs in a single flare, evolutions of kinematic and thermal properties of SADs during the flare process still remain obscure. In this work, we identified 81 SADs in a flare that occurred on 2013 May 22 using observations of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The kinematic properties of each SAD, including the appearance time, height, projective velocity, and acceleration were recorded. We found that the appearance heights of SADs become larger during the flare, which is likely due to the lift of the bottom of the plasma sheet. In the flare decay phase, the region where SADs mainly appear moves from the north part to the south side possibly related to a secondary eruption in the south side. The trajectories of most SADs can be fitted by one or two deceleration processes, while some special ones have positive accelerations during the descent. For the thermal properties, we selected 54 SADs, whose front and body could be clearly distinguished from the surrounding during the entire descent, to perform Differential Emission Measure analysis. It is revealed that the temperatures of the SAD front and body tend to increase during their downward courses, and the relationship between the density and temperature indicates that the heating is mainly caused by adiabatic compression.