2001/07/09 by M. S. Wheatland, Wheatland, M. S.
Energy · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0107147
8 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters
arxiv created 2001/07/09 · openalex publication_date 2001/07/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The question of whether flares occur as a Poisson process has important consequences for flare physics. Recently Lepreti et al. presented evidence for local departure from Poisson statistics in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) X-ray flare catalog. Here it is argued that this effect arises from a selection effect inherent in the soft X-ray observations; namely that the slow decay of enhanced flux following a large flare makes detection of subsequent flares less likely. It is also shown that the power-law tail of the GOES waiting-time distribution varies with the solar cycle. This counts against any intrinsic significance to the appearance of a power law, or to the value of its index.