NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SOLAR MICROFLARES IN A CANOPY-TYPE MAGNETIC CONFIGURATION

Microflares are small activities in the solar low atmosphere; some are in the low corona while others are in the chromosphere. Observations show that some of the microflares are triggered by magnetic reconnection between the emerging flux and a pre-existing background magnetic field. We perform 2.5-dimensional, compressible, resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the magnetic reconnection with gravity considered. The background magnetic field is a canopy-type configuration that is rooted at the boundary of the solar supergranule. By changing the bottom boundary conditions in the simulation, a new magnetic flux emerges at the center of the supergranule and reconnects with the canopy-type magnetic field. We successfully simulate the coronal and chromospheric microflares whose current sheets are located at the corona and the chromosphere, respectively. The microflare with a coronal origin has a larger size and a higher temperature enhancement than the microflare with a chromospheric origin. In the microflares with coronal origins, we also found a hot jet (similar to 1.8x10(6) K), which is probably related to the observational extreme ultraviolet or soft X-ray jets, and a cold jet (similar to 10(4) K), which is similar to the observational H alpha/Ca surges. However, there is only a H alpha/Ca bright point in the microflares that have chromospheric origins. The study of parameter dependence shows that the size and strength of the emerging magnetic flux are the key parameters that determine the height of the reconnection location, and they further determine the different observational features of the microflares.