Avalanche models for solar flares (Invited Review)

This class of flare model is built on a recent paradigm in statistical physics, known as self-organized criticality. The basic idea is that flares are the result of an 'avalanche' of small-scale magnetic reconnection events cascading through a highly stressed coronal magnetic structure, driven to a critical state by random photospheric motions of its magnetic footpoints.

Such models thus provide a natural and convenient computational framework to examine Parker's hypothesis of coronal heating by nanoflares.