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Published February 1, 2023 | Published
Journal Article Open

Simulation of the Solar Energetic Particle Event on 2020 May 29 Observed by Parker Solar Probe

Abstract

This paper presents a stochastic three-dimensional focused transport simulation of solar energetic particles (SEPs) produced by a data-driven coronal mass ejection (CME) shock propagating through a data-driven model of coronal and heliospheric magnetic fields. The injection of SEPs at the CME shock is treated using diffusive shock acceleration of post-shock suprathermal solar wind ions. A time-backward stochastic simulation is employed to solve the transport equation to obtain the SEP time–intensity profile at any location, energy, and pitch angle. The model is applied to a SEP event on 2020 May 29, observed by STEREO-A close to ∼1 au and by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) when it was about 0.33 au away from the Sun. The SEP event was associated with a very slow CME with a plane-of-sky speed of 337 km s⁻¹ at a height below 6 R_S as reported in the SOHO/LASCO CME catalog. We compute the time profiles of particle flux at PSP and STEREO-A locations, and estimate both the spectral index of the proton energy spectrum for energies between ∼2 and 16 MeV and the equivalent path length of the magnetic field lines experienced by the first arriving SEPs. We find that the simulation results are well correlated with observations. The SEP event could be explained by the acceleration of particles by a weak CME shock in the low solar corona that is not magnetically connected to the observers.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. M.Z. acknowledges support from NASA Grants 80NSSC19K1254, 80NSSC21K0004, 80NSSC20K0098, and 80NSSC20K0086. L.A.B. acknowledges support from NASA grant 80NSSC19K1235. D.L. acknowledges support from NASA Living with a Star (LWS) programs NNH17ZDA001N-LWS and NNH19ZDA001N-LWS, the Goddard Space Flight Center Internal Scientist Funding Model (competitive work package) program and the Heliophysics Innovation Fund (HIF) program. This CME catalog is generated and maintained at the CDAW Data Center by NASA and The Catholic University of America in cooperation with the Naval Research Laboratory. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. Parker Solar Probe was designed, built, and is now operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory as part of NASA's Living with a Star (LWS) program. The data from the observation are downloaded from http://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov. The computation facility used to run the simulations in the paper was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. CNS 2016818.

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023