Speaker
Description
Solar eruptions are classified as sympathetic when they are triggered nearly synchronously but originate from distinct regions on the solar surface, likely due to physical interactions between them. Since the initial investigation of this phenomenon by Richardson et al. (1951), various studies have sought to systematically identify these sympathetic flares from a statistical perspective, but their clear statistical existence on the Sun has yet to be firmly established.
In this presentation, we report on a recent statistical analysis of sympathetic flares (Guité et al. 2025), utilizing data from multiple instruments (SDO/AIA, RHESSI, and Solar Orbiter/STIX) that collectively span from the peak of solar cycle 23 to the present. Our analysis reveals for the first time a significant overabundance of hemispheric pairs of flares with short waiting times (w ≤ 1.5 hours) that are separated by approximately 30 degrees in longitude. At these spatial and temporal scales, a physical interaction occurring on the solar surface would imply a characteristic velocity of at least 100 km/s. The occurrence rate of sympathetic flares is estimated to be around 5% across the three instruments. Additionally, we observe a deficit of consecutive transequatorial events separated by 25-30 degrees in latitude and less than 5 degrees in longitude, which we designate as unsympathetic flares. Finally, we propose an interpretation of the observed angular scale of the sympathetic phenomenon based on the separation between magnetic field line footpoints derived from potential field source surface extrapolations.
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