Solar Energetic Particles

Simo Lehtinen
 Contents
● What are SEPs?

● Where do they come from?

● What do they do?

● What are we missing?

● Summary
 Brief history
1860 Carrington Event
- First flare observations

1946 Forbush - the first SEPs

- Ground-level event (GLE)

1963 Wild, Smerd, Weiss – categorization

- Type III radio bursts (electrons) , impulsive
- Type II shock bursts (protons) , gradual
 Definition
Energetic charged particles traveling much
faster than ambient solar wind (relativistic!)

Can travel from the Sun to the Earth in less

than an hour
- Difficult to predict / warn
- Generally happen near solar maximum

Protons, electrons and He, O, N, C ions

- Electrons 10 KeV to 100 KeV
- Protons 100 KeV to 1 GeV
 Sources
Solar flares
- Impulsive electron events

Coronal mass ejections

- Shock-accelerated gradual proton events
- Only few CMEs (~1%) are fast enough

Charged particles are tied to the magnetic field

- SEPs follow the Parker spiral
- CMEs can provide a magnetic 'reservoir'
Types

Impulsive events Gradual events

- Short duration - Long duration
- Electrons - Protons
- Flare acceleration - Shock acceleration
- Lower intensity - High intensity
- Much more common - Rare, associated with CMEs

Not the whole picture!

- Intense electron events also associated with CMEs
Impulsive events

Generated by magnetic reconnection in

flares

Created at heights under 1 solar radii

Further acceleration method unclear

- Probably several different methods
Gradual events
Driven by CME shocks
- The shock interface can accelerate particles
Gyroresonance or Fermi acceleration

- Seed population of suprathermal ions from flares

- Shock alone not enough for a SEP event
CMEs can open field lines and occur near active regions

Composed of the solar wind

 Dangers of SEPs

Satellites can be damaged

Astronauts risk radiation sickness

Navigation, GPS and radio communications can

be disrupted
 Ground Level Enhancement
A rare subset of SEP events

High-energy protons (>0.5GeV) penetrate the

atmosphere
- Largest energies in the solar system

Collisions with atoms can be detected at neutron

monitoring stations on the ground
 Predicting SEPs
High-energy protons are especially dangerous

Electrons are light, so they will arrive first

Use the electron event to predict the protons

- We have satellites in the L1 point

Still a very short warning

- Enough for astronauts to return from EVA
 Open questions
Origin: What are the seed populations?

Acceleration: How are the particles

accelerated?

Transportation: How are the particles distributed

into interplanetary space?

● Parker Solar Probe to the rescue?

 Summary
● SEPs are highly energetic particles from the Sun
- Mostly protons and electrons, ranging from 10KeV to over 1GeV
● SEP events are divided into two categories – impulsive events
and gradual events
- This is an oversimplification
● The particles are accelerated by various processes at different
points in their lifespan
- Magnetic reconnection in flares
- Shock acceleration on the way to Earth
● SEP radiation can be dangerous to people, technology and
communications
- Events are difficult to predict in time
● There is much we don't know yet