Heat-transfer mechanisms in solar flares. 2: Consideration of heat-flux relaxation

The physical properties of the process of heat transfer from a solar-flare’s energy source (a high-temperature reconnecting current layer) to the surrounding plasma of the Sun’s atmosphere are investigated. Major attention is given to consideration of the collisional relaxation of the heat flux and to analysis of its related effects. The physical meaning of this phenomenon is that the heat flux responds to a change in the spatial temperature distribution with a delay rather than immediately, as in the simplest approximation described by the classical Fourier’s law. It is shown that this mechanism describes the heat transfer in flares better than classical and anomalous heat conduction (see Part 1).