INVESTIGATING THE NONTHERMAL VELOCITY OF SMALL GOES-CLASS FLARES OBSERVED BY YOHKOH

Previous examinations of line broadening in salar flares have tended t o concentrate: on large GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) classifacation events. Because of time sensitivity of the Y ohkoh Bragg crystal spectrometer, it is possible to observe small GOES flares. We derive the nonthermal velocity for 45 small GOES flares ob served during 1994 by Yahkoh, concentrating on the peal; and rise phas e of the nonthermal velocity (V-nt). We examine the variation of V-nt with electron temperature, GOES classification, duration of event, ris e time, and the source size of the event. The results demonstrate that the broadening is independent of the flare size, complexity, and inte nsity of hard X-ray bursts. There is a weak dependence on duration and rise time: as the durations and rise times become longer, the value o f V-nt decreases. There is also a trend of increasing V-nt with increa sing temperature for the same ion.