Thermodynamic evolution of a sigmoidal active region with associated flares

Abstract

ABSTRACT Active regions often show S-shaped structures in the corona called sigmoids. These are highly sheared and twisted loops formed along the polarity inversion line. They are considered to be one of the best pre-eruption signatures for CMEs. Here, we investigate the thermodynamic evolution of an on-disc sigmoid observed during 2015 December 24–28. For this purpose, we have employed Emission Measure (EM) and filter-ratio techniques on the observations recorded by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on-board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and X-ray Telescope (XRT) on-board Hinode. The EM analysis showed multithermal plasma along the sigmoid and provided a peak temperature of ∼10–12.5 MK for all observed flares. The sigmoidal structure showed emission from Fe xviii (93.93 Å) and Fe xxi (128.75 Å) lines in the AIA 94 and 131 Å channels, respectively. Our results show that the hot plasma is often confined to very hot strands. The temperature obtained from the EM analysis was found to be in good agreement with that obtained using the XRT, AIA, and GOES filter-ratio methods. These results provide important constraints for the thermodynamic modelling of sigmoidal structures in the core of active regions. Moreover, this study also benchmarks different techniques available for temperature estimation in solar coronal structures.