Spatial distribution of magnetic reconnection in the 2006 December 13 solar flare as observed by Hinode

A massive two-ribbon flare and its source magnetic field region were well captured by the Solar Optical Telescope ( SOT) on board Hinode in the Ca II H spectral line and by the Spectro-Polarimeter of SOT, respectively. Using the high-resolution Hinode data sets, we compare the spatial distribution of the local magnetic reconnection rate and the energy release rate along the ribbons with that of G-band kernels that serve as a proxy for the primary energy release. The G-band kernels spatially coincide with the maximum of both modeled quantities, which gives strong support for the reconnection model. We also investigate the magnitude scaling correlation between the ribbon separation speed V-r and magnetic field strength B-n at four 2 minute time bins around the maximum phase of the flare. It is found that V-r is weakly and negatively correlated with. An empirical relation V-r proportional to B-n-(0.15) of is obtained at the flare peak time with an correlation coefficient similar to -0.33. The correlation is weaker at other time bins.