SH33B-2471
Effect of Coherent Structures on Energetic Particle Intensity in the Solar Wind at 1 AU

Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Jeffrey Tessein1, David J Ruffolo2, William H Matthaeus1, Minping Wan1, Joe Giacalone3 and Marcia Neugebauer3, (1)University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States, (2)Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand, (3)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
Abstract:
We present results from an analysis of ACE observations of energetic particles in the 0.047-4.78
MeV range associated with shocks and discontinuities in the solar wind. Previous work (Tessein
et al. 2013) found a strong correlation between discontinuities, identified using a normalized vector
increment and the intensity of energetic particles measured by ACE/EPAM, based on a superposed
epoch analysis using over 12 years of data. Here, we examine many individual high-PVI events
to better understand this association emphasizing intervals selected from data with shock
neighborhoods removed. We find that in many cases the local maximum in PVI is in a region of
rising or falling energetic particle intensity, which suggests that magnetic discontinuities may act as
barriers inhibiting the motion of energetic particles across them.
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