AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE ELECTRON TEMPERATURE AND HEAVY ION VELOCITIES IN THE SOUTH POLAR CORONAL HOLE     

Ko  Yuan-Kuen  Fisk  Lennard A.  Geiss  Johannes  Gloeckler  George  Guhathakurta  Madhulika 《Solar physics》1997,171(2):345-361

The solar wind ions flowing outward through the solar corona generally have their ionic fractions freeze-in within 5 solar radii. The altitude where the freeze-in occurs depends on the competition between two time scales: the time over which the wind flows through a density scale height, and the time over which the ions achieve ionization equilibrium. Therefore, electron temperature, electron density, and the velocity of the ions are the three main physical quantities which determine the freeze-in process, and thus the solar wind ionic charge states. These physical quantities are determined by the heating and acceleration of the solar wind, as well as the geometry of the expansion. In this work, we present a parametric study of the electron temperature profile and velocities of the heavy ions in the inner solar corona. We use the ionic charge composition data observed by the SWICS experiment on Ulysses during the south polar pass to derive empirically the electron temperature profile in the south polar coronal hole. We find that the electron temperature profile in the solar inner corona is well constrained by the solar wind charge composition data. The data also indicate that the electron temperature profile must have a maximum within 2 solar radii. We also find that the velocities of heavy ions in their freeze-in regions are small (<100 km s^-1) and different elements must flow at different velocities in the inner corona.  相似文献   

Initial Fe/O Enhancements in Large, Gradual, Solar Energetic Particle Events: Observations from Wind and Ulysses     

Allan J. Tylka  Olga E. Malandraki  Gareth Dorrian  Yuan-Kuen Ko  Richard G. Marsden  Chee K. Ng  Cecil Tranquille 《Solar physics》2013,285(1-2):251-267

Shocks driven by fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are the dominant particle accelerators in large, “gradual” solar energetic particle (SEP) events. In these events, the event-integrated value of the iron-to-oxygen ratio (Fe/O) is typically ～?0.1, at least at energies of a few MeV/nucleon. However, at the start of some gradual events, when intensities are low and growing, initially Fe/O is ～?1. This value is also characteristic of small, “impulsive” SEP events, in which particle acceleration is due to magnetic reconnection. These observations suggested that SEPs in gradual events also include a direct contribution from the flare that accompanied the CME launch. If correct, this interpretation is of critical importance: it indicates a clear path to interplanetary space for particles from the reconnection region beneath the CME. A key issue for the flare origin is “magnetic connectedness”, i.e., proximity of the flare site to the solar footpoint of the observer’s magnetic field line. We present two large gradual events observed in 2001 by Wind at L1 and by Ulysses, when it was located at >?60^° heliolatitude and beyond 1.6 AU. In these events, transient Fe/O enhancements at 5?–?10 MeV/nucleon were seen at both spacecraft, even though one or both is not “well-connected” to the flare. These observations demonstrate that an initial Fe/O enhancement cannot be cited as evidence for a direct flare component. Instead, initial Fe/O enhancements are better understood as a transport effect, driven by the different mass-to-charge ratios of Fe and O. We further demonstrate that the time-constant of the roughly exponential decay of the Fe/O ratio scales as R ², where R is the observer’s radial distance from the Sun. This behavior is consistent with radial diffusion. These observations thus also provide a potential constraint on models in which SEPs reach high heliolatitudes by cross-field diffusion.  相似文献