What does reconnection do?

We've confirmed that the slowest of the gradual flares devote the same fraction of energy to the acceleration of 10-100 keV electrons as do the most violent impulsive flares. Some (5 of 17 to date) of these "slow LDE" events also show supra-arcade downflows.

We suggest that the visibility of the supra-arcade flows depends upon the slowness of the reconnection, following the Forbes-Acton explanation that lower shrinkage speeds correspond to higher plasma beta.

We do not understand what produces the spiky structure, which also may aid in making the flows (mainly between the spikes) visible. We speculate that the order we observe is imposed by instabilities in enhanced solar-wind flow along the streamer (cusp) configuration.

In any of the recent scenarios for electron acceleration (termination shock, slow shock, X-point, turbulent current sheet) the energy going to particle acceleration must strongly depend on the reconnection rate. Why is it so model-independent?

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