Dynamic modelling of coronal abundances during flares on M-dwarf stars

Solar atmospheric elemental abundances are now known to vary both in space and time. Dynamic modelling of these changes is therefore necessary to improve the accuracy of radiative hydrodynamic simulations. Recent studies have shown that including spatio-temporal variations in coronal abundances during solar flares leads to the formation of coronal condensations (rain), which are otherwise difficult to create in impulsively heated field-aligned hydrodynamic flare models. These simulations start with a solar corona dominated by the first ionization potential (FIP) effect and evaporate photospheric material into the post-flare loops. We here explore perhaps the most extreme non-solar starting condition for the coronal composition in these simulations: an initial corona dominated by the inverse FIP (iFIP) effect, which is observed on active M-dwarf stars. We show that a flaring event in a corona enriched with high-FIP elements leads to a solution similar to the solar case. Coronal rain is harder to form by this method during flares on M-dwarfs, however, if the corona is depleted of low-FIP elements. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Solar atmospheric abundances in space and time’.