Quantifying Chromosphere Response to Flare Energy Release Using AIA Observations in 1600 Å and 304 Å Passbands

Imaging observations of the solar lower atmosphere by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) have been mostly used as the context, and their quantitative information has been much less explored. The chromosphere responds rapidly to energy release by magnetic reconnection during flares. Furthermore, a flare is a collection of multiple energy release events that can be identified in spatially resolved chromosphere observations. In this paper, we conduct a statistical and semi-quantitative study of the relative photometry in the UV 1600 Å and EUV 304 Å passbands for 18 flares observed by AIA. In each flare, we have identified thousands of flare ribbon pixels in the UV 1600 Å images, and measured their brightness (counts per second) and the rise and decay timescales, which are indicative of heating properties in flare loops. The analysis shows that bright flare pixels, characterized by peak brightness larger than ten times the quiescent brightness, exhibit sharplight curves with the half rise time below 2 min, followed by a two-phase decay with a rapid decay on timescales comparable to the rise time and then a more gradual decay. Flare ribbon pixels identified in both UV 1600 Å and EUV 304 Å images exhibit similar time profiles during the rise, and their peak brightness appear to be related by a power law. Our analysis shows that AIA observed flare brightness in UV 1600 Å relative to the quiescent brightness is a meaningful measurement of the flare chromosphere photometry. AIA observations for over a decade thus provide a unique and extensive database for systematic and semi-quantitative study of flaring chromosphere, either in the context of the Sun as a star, or in spatially resolved manner that helps to probe the nature of flare energy release on elementary scales.