This awards supports a two-year collaborative research project between Professor Ken-Ichi Nishikawa of the University of Iowa and Professor Jun-ichi Sakai of Toyama University, Japan. Also involved in the project are Professor Torsten Neubert of the University of Michigan and Shinji Koide of Toyama University. Recently the Japan-U.S. satellite "Yohkoh" has obtained new observations of solar flare plasmas. In particular, the coalescences of current loops have been observed in the active regions on the Sun, which were proposed by Sakai et al since 1982. This observation has pointed out the importance of their idea that the solar flare is generated by the coaslescence of current loops. This research project will model the dynamics of the coalescence of current loops by means of a 3-D electromagnetic (E-M) particle simulation code associated with theories and MHD simulations. The main topic is to investigate the kinetic processes such as energy transfer, acceleration of high-energy particles, and electromagnetic emissions associated with the current loop coalescence that cannot be studied by MHD simulations.
