Intensity Thresholds and the Statistics of the Temporal Occurrence of Solar Flares

Introducing thresholds to analyze time series of emission from the Sun enables a new and simple definition of solar flare events and their interoccurrence times. Rescaling time by the rate of events, the waiting and quiet time distributions both conform to scaling functions that are independent of the intensity threshold over a wide range. The scaling functions are well-described by a two-parameter function, with parameters that depend on the phase of the solar cycle. For flares identified according to the current, standard definition, similar behavior is found.