Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published March 20, 2000 | Published
Journal Article Open

Interplanetary magnetic field line mixing deduced from impulsive solar flare particles

Abstract

We have studied fine-scale temporal variations in the arrival profiles of ~20 keV nucleon^(-1) to ~2 MeV nucleon^(-1) ions from impulsive solar flares using instrumentation on board the Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft at 1 AU between 1997 November and 1999 July. The particle events often had short-timescale (~3 hr) variations in their intensity that occurred simultaneously across all energies and were generally not in coincidence with any local magnetic field or plasma signature. These features appear to be caused by the convection of magnetic flux tubes past the observer that are alternately filled and devoid of flare ions even though they had a common flare source at the Sun. Thus, we have used the particles to study the mixing of the interplanetary magnetic field that is due to random walk. We deduce an average timescale of 3.2 hr for these features, which corresponds to a length of ~0.03 AU.

Additional Information

© 2000 The American Astronomical Society. Received 1999 December 9; accepted 2000 February 3; published 2000 March 2. We thank the many members of the ACE instrument teams who have contributed to the success of the ACE mission, and we acknowledge the special efforts of R. E. Gold and S. M. Krimigis. We thank C. Smith and the ACE/MAG team for the ACE magnetic field measurements reported here, and we thank D. McComas, R. Skoug, and the ACE/SWEPAM team for the solar wind measurements used in the analysis. This work was supported by a contract (Q295801) between the University of Maryland and The Aerospace Corporation. This work was also supported by NASA grant PC 251429. J. Gicalone and J. R. Jokipii acknowledge the support of NASA grants NAG5-7793 and NAG5-6620 and NSF grant ATM 9616547.

Attached Files

Published - 1538-4357_532_1_L79.pdf

Files

1538-4357_532_1_L79.pdf
Files (545.8 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:dd5e53737fcea08a08246f958961dbfd
545.8 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 21, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023