Simulation of the Solar Energetic Particle Event on 2020 May 29 Observed by Parker Solar Probe

This paper presents a stochastic three-dimensional (3D) focused transport simulation of solar energetic particles (SEPs) produced by a data-driven coronal mass ejection (CME) shock propagating through a data-driven model of coronal and heliospheric magnetic fields. The injection of SEPs at the CME s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-09
Main Authors: Cheng, Lei, Zhang, Ming, Lario, David, Balmaceda, Laura A, Ryun Young Kwon, Cohen, Christina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Coronal mass ejection
Energetic particles
Energy spectra
Magnetic fields
Pitch (inclination)
Proton energy
Simulation
Solar corona
Solar probes
Solar wind
Transport equations
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Summary:This paper presents a stochastic three-dimensional (3D) focused transport simulation of solar energetic particles (SEPs) produced by a data-driven coronal mass ejection (CME) shock propagating through a data-driven model of coronal and heliospheric magnetic fields. The injection of SEPs at the CME shock is treated using diffusive shock acceleration of post-shock superthermal solar wind ions. A time backward stochastic simulation is employed to solve the transport equation to obtain the SEP time-intensity profile at any location, energy, and pitch angle. The model is applied to a SEP event on 2020 May 29, observed by STEREO-A close to 1 au and by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) when it was about 0.33 au away from the Sun. The SEP event was associated with a very slow CME with a plane-of-sky speed of 337 km/s at a height below 6 \(\rm R_S\) as reported in the SOHO/LASCO CME catalog. We compute the time profiles of particle flux at PSP and STEREO-A locations, and estimate both the spectral index of the proton energy spectrum for energies between 2 and 16 MeV and the equivalent path length of the magnetic field lines experienced by the first arriving SEPs. We found that the simulation results are well correlated with observations. The SEP event could be explained by the acceleration of particles by a weak CME shock in the low solar corona that is not magnetically connected to the observers.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2209.02566