The large longitudinal spread of solar energetic particles during the January 17, 2010 solar event

We investigate multi-spacecraft observations of the January 17, 2010 solar energetic particle event. Energetic electrons and protons have been observed over a remarkable large longitudinal range at the two STEREO spacecraft and SOHO suggesting a longitudinal spread of nearly 360 degrees at 1AU. The flaring active region, which was on the backside of the Sun as seen from Earth, was separated by more than 100 degrees in longitude from the magnetic footpoints of each of the three spacecraft. The event is characterized by strongly delayed energetic particle onsets with respect to the flare and only small or no anisotropies in the intensity measurements at all three locations. The presence of a coronal shock is evidenced by the observation of a type II radio burst from the Earth and STEREO B. In order to describe the observations in terms of particle transport in the interplanetary medium, including perpendicular diffusion, a 1D model describing the propagation along a magnetic field line (model 1) (Dr\"oge, 2003) and the 3D propagation model (model 2) by (Dr\"oge et al., 2010) including perpendicular diffusion in the interplanetary medium have been applied, respectively. While both models are capable of reproducing the observations, model 1 requires injection functions at the Sun of several hours. Model 2, which includes lateral transport in the solar wind, reveals high values for the ratio of perpendicular to parallel diffusion. Because we do not find evidence for unusual long injection functions at the Sun we favor a scenario with strong perpendicular transport in the interplanetary medium as explanation for the observations.Comment: The final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.co

Acceleration and transport modeling in the solar energetic particle event of 2000 May 1

online ID 64

A mechanism for the fractionation of isotopes in ³He-rich solar energetic particle events

By employing our charge-consistent acceleration model we demonstrate a possibility to explain the isotopic ratios observed in a number of 3He-rich events. We investigate the dependence of isotopic ratios of heavy ions on the energy of the particles, the acceleration efficiency, the product of acceleration time, and the number density of ambient electrons, of the plasma temperature, and of the spectral index of the magnetic fluctuations by which the ions are energized in the acceleration region. On the basis of the energy spectra of heavy ions and their isotopic ratios observed in the event of 2002 August 20 by the Solar Isotope Spectrometer on board the Advanced Composition Explorer (SIS/ACE) we put constraints on the plasma parameters in the acceleration region. Our investigation gives evidence that the spectral index of the fluctuations with which the ions interact is greater than 2, and that the plasma temperature is about 1 MK

A possible enrichment of heavy and ultraheavy ions in solar energetic particle events due to a combined effect of stochastic acceleration and Coulomb losses

Solar particle events that are rich in 3He typically also exhibit large overabundances of heavy and ultraheavy ions that increase with the mass of the ions. To explain these observations we apply our charge-consistent acceleration model, which takes into account the acceleration efficiency as a function of the charge to mass ratio of the ion, as well as the charge-dependent Coulomb energy losses, to consider the acceleration of ions within a wide range of their nuclear charge. Because the considerations of particle acceleration were restricted so far by tabulated values of ionization and recombination coefficients that were available only for a limited set of ions, we make use of our method developed earlier and calculate the rates of ions resembling the three representative mass groups of ultraheavy ions. We demonstrate that smaller Coulomb losses together with higher acceleration efficiency result in the enhancements of heavy and ultraheavy ions, in accordance with recent observations. We also conclude that the existing measurements of ultraheavy ions in impulsive solar energetic particle events provide evidence in favor of a magnetic turbulence in the acceleration region with spectral index S ≥ 2