Joint Effects of Compton Backscattering and Low-Energy Cutoff on the Flattening of Solar Hard X-Ray Spectra at Lower Energies

Theoretical calculation has shown that the spectrum of the Compton backscattering component in solar hard X-ray flares has a peak around 30 keV for a primary power-law source. Thus the superposition of the Compton backscattering component could cause a photon spectrum received at the Earth to be flattened below the peak energy and steeper above the peak energy. On the other hand, because a thick-target bremsstrahlung photon with a given energy E only could be produced by a nonthermal electron with an energy larger than E, thus if a power-law electron spectrum is cutoff below an energy Ec, then the produced photon spectrum will become flattened below Ec. In this work we present a calculation of the joint effects of the Compton backscattering and the low-energy cutoff on the spectral characteristics of the received solar hard X-ray in the energy range 10–100 keV. The results show that the flattening caused purely by the Compton backscattering could be comparable with that by the low-energy cutoff for hard spectra. So, it is obvious that the joint effects of the low-energy cutoff and the Compton backscattering could result in the received photon spectra to be much more flattened at lower energies. On the other hand, compared to the primary photon spectrum, the received photon spectral index will increase about 0.15 due to the Compton backscattering at higher energy, which seems independent of the primary spectral index.