scholarly journals Looking for the FIP Effect in EUV Spectra: Examining the Solar Case

1996 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 511-518
Author(s):  
Bernhard Haisch ◽  
Julia L. R. Saba ◽  
Jean-Paul Meyer

Systematic differences between elemental abundances in the corona and in the photosphere have been found in the Sun. The abundance anomalies are correlated with the first ionization potentials (FIP) of the elements. The overall pattern is that low-FIP elements are preferentially enhanced relative to high-FIP elements by about a factor of four; the transition occurs at about 10 eV. This phenomenon has been measured in the solar wind and solar energetic particle composition, and in EUV and X-ray spectra of the corona and flares. The FIP effect should eventually offer valuable clues into the process of heating, ionization and injection of material into coronal and flaring loops for the Sun and other stars. The situation for the Sun is remarkably complex: substantial abundance differences occur between different types of coronal structures, and variations occur over time in the same region and from flare to flare. Anomalies such as enhanced Ne/O ratios, distinctly at odds with the basic FIP pattern, have been reported for some flares. Are the high-FIP elements underabundant or the low-FIP elements overabundant with respect to hydrogen? This issue, which has a significant impact in physical interpretation of coronal spectra, is still a subject of controversy and an area of vigorous research.

2019 ◽  
Vol 486 (4) ◽  
pp. 4671-4685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wageesh Mishra ◽  
Nandita Srivastava ◽  
Yuming Wang ◽  
Zavkiddin Mirtoshev ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Similar to the Sun, other stars shed mass and magnetic flux via ubiquitous quasi-steady wind and episodic stellar coronal mass ejections (CMEs). We investigate the mass loss rate via solar wind and CMEs as a function of solar magnetic variability represented in terms of sunspot number and solar X-ray background luminosity. We estimate the contribution of CMEs to the total solar wind mass flux in the ecliptic and beyond, and its variation over different phases of the solar activity cycles. The study exploits the number of sunspots observed, coronagraphic observations of CMEs near the Sun by SOHO/LASCO, in situ observations of the solar wind at 1 AU by WIND, and GOES X-ray flux during solar cycles 23 and 24. We note that the X-ray background luminosity, occurrence rate of CMEs and ICMEs, solar wind mass flux, and associated mass loss rates from the Sun do not decrease as strongly as the sunspot number from the maximum of solar cycle 23 to the next maximum. Our study confirms a true physical increase in CME activity relative to the sunspot number in cycle 24. We show that the CME occurrence rate and associated mass loss rate can be better predicted by X-ray background luminosity than the sunspot number. The solar wind mass loss rate which is an order of magnitude more than the CME mass loss rate shows no obvious dependency on cyclic variation in sunspot number and solar X-ray background luminosity. These results have implications for the study of solar-type stars.


2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1421-1425 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.A. Bazilevskaya ◽  
A.I. Sladkova ◽  
A.K. Svirzhevskaya

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. A47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Kahler ◽  
Alan. G. Ling

Solar flare X-ray peak fluxes and fluences in the 0.1–0.8 nm band are often used in models to forecast solar energetic particle (SEP) events. Garcia (2004) [Forecasting methods for occurrence and magnitude of proton storms with solar soft X rays, Space Weather, 2, S02002, 2004] used ratios of the 0.05–0.4 and 0.1–0.8 nm bands of the X-ray instrument on the GOES spacecraft to plot inferred peak flare temperatures versus peak 0.1–0.8 nm fluxes for flares from 1988 to 2002. Flares associated with E > 10 MeV SEP events of >10 proton flux units (pfu) had statistically lower peak temperatures than those without SEP events and therefore offered a possible empirical forecasting tool for SEP events. We review the soft and hard X-ray flare spectral variations as SEP event forecast tools and repeat Garcia’s work for the period 1998–2016, comparing both the peak ratios and the ratios of the preceding 0.05–0.4 nm peak fluxes to the later 0.1–0.8 nm peak fluxes of flares >M3 to the occurrence of associated SEP events. We divide the events into eastern and western hemisphere sources and compare both small (1.2–10 pfu) and large (≥300 pfu) SEP events with those of >10 pfu. In the western hemisphere X-ray peak ratios are statistically lower for >10 pfu SEP events than for non-SEP events and are even lower for the large (>300 pfu) events. The small SEP events, however, are not distinguished from the non-SEP events. We discuss the possible connections between the flare X-ray peak ratios and associated coronal mass ejections that are presumed to be the sources of the SEPs.


2022 ◽  
Vol 924 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Fan Guo ◽  
Lulu Zhao ◽  
Christina M. S. Cohen ◽  
Joe Giacalone ◽  
R. A. Leske ◽  
...  

Abstract We propose a model for interpreting highly variable ion composition ratios in solar energetic particle (SEP) events recently observed by the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) at 0.3–0.45 au. We use numerical simulations to calculate SEP propagation in a turbulent interplanetary magnetic field with a Kolmogorov power spectrum from large scales down to the gyration scale of energetic particles. We show that when the source regions of different species are offset by a distance comparable to the size of the source regions, the observed energetic particle composition He/H can be strongly variable over more than two orders of magnitude, even if the source ratio is at the nominal value. Assuming a 3He/4He source ratio of 10% in impulsive 3He-rich events and the same spatial offset of the source regions, the 3He/4He ratio at observation sites also vary considerably. The variability of the ion composition ratios depends on the radial distance, which can be tested by observations made at different radial locations. We discuss the implications of these results on the variability of ion composition of impulsive events and on further PSP and Solar Orbiter observations close to the Sun.


Author(s):  
Donald V. Reames

AbstractLarge solar energetic-particle (SEP) events are clearly associated in time with eruptive phenomena on the Sun, but how? When large SEP events were first observed, flares were the only visible candidate, and diffusion theory was stretched to explain how the particles could spread through space, as widely as observed. The observation of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and the wide, fast shock waves they can drive, provided better candidates later. Then small events were found with 1000-fold enhancements in 3He/4He that required a different kind of source—should we reconsider flares, or their open-field cousins, solar jets? The 3He-rich events were soon associated with the electron beams that produce type III radio bursts. It seems the radio astronomers knew of both SEP sources all along. Sometimes the distinction between the sources is blurred when shocks reaccelerate residual 3He-rich impulsive suprathermal ions. Eventually, however, we would even begin to measure the source-plasma temperature that helps to better distinguish the SEP sources.


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