  Finite thermal velocity modifications to electron slowing-down rates may be
important for the deduction of solar flare total electron energy. Here we treat
both slowing-down and velocity diffusion of electrons in the corona at flare
temperatures, for the case of a simple, spatially homogeneous source. Including
velocity diffusion yields a consistent treatment of both `accelerated' and
`thermal' electrons. It also emphasises that one may not invoke finite thermal
velocity target effects on electron lifetimes without simultaneously treating
the contribution to the observed X-ray spectrum from thermal electrons. We
present model calculations of the X-ray spectra resulting from injection of a
power-law energy distribution of electrons into a source with finite
temperature. Reducing the power-law distribution low-energy cutoff to lower and
lower energies only increases the relative magnitude of the thermal component
of the spectrum, because the lowest energy electrons simply join the background
thermal distribution. Acceptable fits to RHESSI flare data are obtained using
this model. These also demonstrate, however, that observed spectra may in
consequence be acceptably consistent with rather a wide range of injected
electron parameters.
