Effect of coherent structures on energetic particle intensity in the solar wind
Date
2015
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Solar energetic particles in the solar wind are accelerated in both solar flares and shocks assocated with fast coronal mass ejections. They follow the interplanetary magnetic field and, upon reaching Earth, have implications for space weather. Space weather affects astronaut health and orbiting equipment through radiation hazard and electrical infrastructure on the ground with ground induced currents. Economic im- pacts include disruption of GPS and redirection of commercial polar flights due to a dangerous radiation environment over the poles. By studying how these particles interact with the magnetic fields we can better predict onset times and diffusion of these events. We find, using superposed epoch analysis and conditional statisitics from spacecraft observations that there is a strong association between energetic particles in the solar wind and magnetic discontinuities. This may be related to turbulent dissipa- tion mechanisms in which coherent structures in the solar wind seem to be preferred sites of heating, plasma instabilites and dissipation. In the case of energetic particles, magnetic reconnection and transport in flux tubes are likely to play a role. Though we focus on data away from large shocks, trapping can occur in the downstream region of shocks due to the preponderance of compressive turbulence in these areas. This thesis lays the ground work for the results described above with an intro- duction to solar wind and heliospheric physics in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is an intro- duction to the acceleration mechanisms that give rise to observed energetic particle events. Chapter 3 describes various data analysis techniques and statistics that are bread and butter when analyzing spacecraft data for turbulence and energetic particle studies. Chapter 4 is a digression that covers preliminary studies that were done on the side; scale dependent kurtosis, ergodic studies and initial conditions for simulations. Chapter 5 contains that central published results of this thesis, that there is a strong association between energetic particle intensity and magnetic discontinuties and that the correlation is can be attributed to transport and local acceleration.