Waiting Time Distribution of Supra-Arcade Downflows

Supra-arcade downflows (SADs) are dark, sunward-moving structures above the arcade of flare loops. Naturally they are considered to be associated with outflows resulting from magnetic reconnection at the vertical current sheet beneath the eruptive structure. Despite the extensive investigations on the SAD properties, the timing information, particularly the waiting time between consecutive SADs, has not been systematically examined. Here, using the 131~Å passband of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on-board the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we studied the waiting time distribution (WTD) of SADs in 7 eruptive flares. In six of the 7 flares, the SADs are identified and tracked in previous studies, by two different methods; and in the 7th flare, by our optimized manual method. Based on statistical evaluations, we found that most of the WTDs are best fitted by a power-law function with the slope ranging from 1.7 to 2.4, in accordance with the prediction of non-stationary Poisson processes or self-organized criticality; but often they can also be fitted almost equally well by a log-normal function. These results rule out linear random or quasi-periodic processes to be responsible for the generation of SADs, but suggest that several nonlinear mechanisms be coupled together in the reconnection outflow region to shape the heavy-tailed WTD of SADs.