OBSERVATIONS OF FRAGMENTED ENERGY-RELEASE

Energy release into coronal plasmas is observable in the forms of heating and acceleration. In flares and active stars, heating and acceleration have been found to be related as indicated by an approximately constant ratio of microwave (synchrotron) and soft X-ray (thermal) emission. The discovery suggests a flare-like heating process for the quiescent coronae of active stars. The energy release in solar flares involves several time scales: (i) The largest is the rate of homologous flares in an active region of the order of one per five hours. (ii) Hard X-ray and Halpha emissions suggest a total flare duration of ten minutes, (iii) with individual episodes of contiguous acceleration of one minute. (iv) Elementary hard X-ray peaks have 5-10 s duration, corresponding to groups of beams observable as type III radio bursts. (v) The effective injection time of these beams is of the order 0.1 s. (vi) The smaller time scale is observed in narrowband radio spikes in the 0.2-8 GHz range with durations of a few times 0.01 s.