The Ubiquity of White-Light Flares on the Sun
Abstract
White-light flares (WLFs) have long been considered rare on the Sun, as most magnetic reconnections occur in the corona, making it difficult to transport sufficient energy downward to heat the very low layers for WL continuum emission. However, it is also argued that WL continuum emission is a common feature of all flares, and the rare detection of them is largely due to the limited sensitivity and resolution of telescopes. Recently, we developed a new method to identify WLFs, which exhibits extraordinary detection capability. Combined with SDO/HMI's over 15 years of continuous photospheric observations, it provides us an unprecedented opportunity to address the long-standing debate about WLF ubiquity. A total of 1951 flares (547 B-class, 1316 C-class, and 88 M-class) from 769 low-activity active regions (ARs; flare number < 10) observed during January 2011 - May 2025 are investigated. Among these, 1012 are identified as WLFs, giving an overall occurrence rate of 51.9\%. The occurrence rates for B-, C-, and M-class flares are 36.9\%, 56.9\%, and 85.2\%, respectively, showing a clear increase with flare class. The occurrence rate is also highly correlated with the AR's sunspot number. For the first time, we find that WL continuum radiation is widely present even among B-class flares. Different WLFs contain varying numbers of WL kernels, which exhibit distinct properties, evolutionary behaviors and different relationships with GOES soft X-ray flux and its time derivative. These results strongly suggest that WLFs are a common phenomenon on the Sun.
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026ubiquity,
title = {{The Ubiquity of White-Light Flares on the Sun}},
author = {Shuanghong Li and Yongliang Song and Kun Wang and Mei Zhang and Xianyong Bai and Xiao Yang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.38419},
eprint = {2610.38419},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38419},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Ubiquity of White-Light Flares on the Sun
AU - Shuanghong Li
AU - Yongliang Song
AU - Kun Wang
AU - Mei Zhang
AU - Xianyong Bai
AU - Xiao Yang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.38419
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38419
AB - White-light flares (WLFs) have long been considered rare on the Sun, as most magnetic reconnections occur in the corona, making it difficult to transport sufficient energy downward to heat the very low layers for WL continuum emission. However, it is also argued that WL continuum emission is a common feature of all flares, and the rare detection of them is largely due to the limited sensitivity and resolution of telescopes. Recently, we developed a new method to identify WLFs, which exhibits extraordinary detection capability. Combined with SDO/HMI's over 15 years of continuous photospheric observations, it provides us an unprecedented opportunity to address the long-standing debate about WLF ubiquity. A total of 1951 flares (547 B-class, 1316 C-class, and 88 M-class) from 769 low-activity active regions (ARs; flare number < 10) observed during January 2011 - May 2025 are investigated. Among these, 1012 are identified as WLFs, giving an overall occurrence rate of 51.9\%. The occurrence rates for B-, C-, and M-class flares are 36.9\%, 56.9\%, and 85.2\%, respectively, showing a clear increase with flare class. The occurrence rate is also highly correlated with the AR's sunspot number. For the first time, we find that WL continuum radiation is widely present even among B-class flares. Different WLFs contain varying numbers of WL kernels, which exhibit distinct properties, evolutionary behaviors and different relationships with GOES soft X-ray flux and its time derivative. These results strongly suggest that WLFs are a common phenomenon on the Sun.
ER -