Abstract

An unexpectedly bright, coronal hard X-ray (HXR) source was first discovered using the HXT instrument on Yohkoh (Masuda et al. 1994) and several more examples have been found in RHESSI data. These sources have attracted great interest particularly because they may represent the location of the electron acceleration region. We know that electrons must undergo collisions in order to emit bremsstrahlung HXRs. Therefore self-consistent models for coronal HXR sources must include collisional energy loss and scattering alongside the accelerating agent.

In this talk I will describe work aimed at including the effects of binary collisions in reconnection test particle calculations. We used a numerical method to follow test particle trajectories, based on Honeycutt’s (1992) extension of the RK4 method to stochastic differential equations. This method led to the production of HXR -energy electrons, giving a viable (if highly idealised) model for coronal HXR production.