Advances in Understanding Solar and Stellar Flares

Flares result from the sudden reconnection and relaxation of magnetic fields in the coronae of stellar atmospheres. The highly dynamic atmospheric response produces radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from the radio to X-rays, on a range of timescales, from seconds to days. New high resolution data of solar flares have revealed the intrinsic spatial properties of the flaring chromosphere, which is thought to be where the majority of the flare energy is released as radiation in the optical and near-UV continua and emission lines. New data of stellar flares have revealed the detailed properties of the broadband (white-light) continuum emission, which provides straightforward constraints for models of the transformation of stored magnetic energy in the corona into thermal energy of the lower atmosphere. In this talk, we discuss the physical processes that produce several important spectral phenomena in the near-ultraviolet and optical as revealed from new radiative-hydrodynamic models of flares on the Sun and low mass stars. We present recent progress with high-flux nonthermal electron beams in reproducing the observed optical continuum color temperature of T~10,000 K and the Balmer jump properties in the near-ultraviolet. These beams produce dense, heated chromospheric condensations, which can explain the shape and strength of the continuum emission in M dwarf flares and the red-wing asymmetries in the chromospheric emission lines in recent observations of solar flares from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. Current theoretical challenges and future modeling directions will be discussed, as well as observational synergies between solar and stellar flares.