Physics of Solar Flares

In this talk we outline the current understanding of solar flares, mainly focusing on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) processes. A flare causes plasma heating, mass ejection, and particle acceleration which generates high-energy particles. The key physical processes producing a flare are: the emergence of magnetic field from the solar interior to the solar atmosphere (flux emergence), formation of current-concentrated areas (current sheets) in the corona, and magnetic reconnection proceeding in a current sheet to cause shock heating, mass ejection, and particle acceleration. A flare starts with the dissipation of electric currents in the corona, followed by various dynamic processes that affect lower atmosphere such as the chromosphere and photosphere. In order to understand the physical mechanism for producing a flare, theoretical modeling has been develops, where numerical simulation is a strong tool in that it can reproduce the time-dependent, nonlinear evolution of a flare. In this talk we review various models of a flare proposed so far, explaining key features of individual models. We introduce the general properties of flares by referring observational results, then discuss the processes of energy build-up, release, and transport, all of which are responsible for a flare. We will come to a concluding viewpoint that flares are the manifestation of the recovering and ejecting processes of a global magnetic flux tube in the solar atmosphere, which has been disrupted via interaction with convective plasma while rising through the convection zone.