Quasi-Periodic Pulsations during the Impulsive and Decay phases of an X-class Flare

Laura A. Hayes, Peter T. Gallagher, Brian R. Dennis, Jack Ireland, Andrew R. Inglis, Daniel F. Ryan

Published 2016-07-23Version 1

Quasi-periodic pulsations (QPP) are often observed in X-ray emission from solar flares. To date, it is unclear what their physical origins are. Here, we present a multi-instrument investigation of the nature of QPP during the impulsive and decay phases of the X1.0 flare of 28 October 2013. We focus on the character of the fine structure pulsations evident in the soft X-ray time derivatives and compare this variability with structure across multiple wavelengths including hard X-ray and microwave emission. We find that during the impulsive phase of the flare, high correlations between pulsations in the thermal and non-thermal emissions are seen. A characteristic timescale of ~20s is observed in all channels and a second timescale of ~55s is observed in the non-thermal emissions. Soft X-ray pulsations are seen to persist into the decay phase of this flare, up to 20 minutes after the non-thermal emission has ceased. We find that these decay phase thermal pulsations have very small amplitude and show an increase in characteristic timescale from ~40s up to ~70s. We interpret the bursty nature of the co-existing multi-wavelength QPP during the impulsive phase in terms of episodic particle acceleration and plasma heating. The persistent thermal decay phase QPP are most likely connected with compressive MHD processes in the post-flare loops such as the fast sausage mode or the vertical kink mode.