Possible evidence for beaming in flares from microwave and hard X-ray imaging and spectra

The magnetic field strength and number of burst-producing energetic electrons are presently deduced for the impulsive phase of a solar flare at microwave wavelengths, with the VLA, and hard X-rays, with the SMM Hard X-ray Burst Spectrometer. The combined data indicate that the number of microwave-emitting electrons is at least three orders of magnitude smaller than the number of thick target electrons producing the hard X-rays; this is suggested to be due to the high beaming and inefficient radiation of gyrosynchrotron emission by comparison with isotropically distributed electrons. 22 references