EFFECT of COHERENT STRUCTURES on ENERGETIC PARTICLE INTENSITY in the SOLAR WIND at 1 AU

Jeffrey A. Tessein, David Ruffolo, William H. Matthaeus, Minping Wan, Joe Giacalone, Marcia Neugebauer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present results from an analysis of Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) observations of energetic particles in the 0.047-4.78 MeV range associated with shocks and discontinuities in the solar wind. Previous work found a strong correlation between coherent structures and energetic particles measured by ACE/EPAM. Coherent structures are identified using the Partial Variance of Increments (PVI) method, which is essentially a normalized vector increment. The correlation was 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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number68
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume812
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 10 2015

Keywords

  • acceleration of particles
  • magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
  • plasmas
  • shock waves
  • solar wind

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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