Field-aligned Transport and Acceleration of Solar Energetic Particles

Abstract:

Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) phenomena represent one of the major components of space weather. Often, but not exclusively associated with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), they pose a significant scientific as well as practical interest. As these particles originate at such explosive events, they have energies up to several GeV. SEP may cause disruptions in operations of space instruments and spacecrafts and are dangerous to astronauts. For this reason, studies of SEP events and predictions of their impact are of great importance.

The motion and acceleration of SEP, though kinetic in nature, is governed by Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) and its disturbances. Therefore, a consistent and accurate simulation and predictive tool must include a realistic MHD model of IMF. At the same time, transport of SEP is essentially one-dimensional as at high energies particles are tied to magnetic field lines. This allows building a model that can effectively map active regions on the solar surface onto various regions of the Solar System thus predicting the affected regions of the at any distance from the Sun.

We present the first attempt to construct a model that employs coupling of MHD and kinetic models. The former describes the evolution of IMF disturbed by CME, while the latter simulates particles moving along the field lines extracted from MHD model. The first results are provided.