Element Abundances and Source Plasma Temperatures of Solar Energetic Particles

Abstract

Thirty years ago Breneman and Stone observed that the enhancement or suppression of element abundances in large solar energetic-particle (SEP) events varies as a power of the mass-to-charge ratio, A/Q, of the elements. Since Q during acceleration or transport may depend upon the source plasma temperature T, the pattern of element enhancements can provide a best-fit measure of T. The small SEP events we call 3He-rich or "impulsive" show average enhancements, relative to coronal abundances, rising as the 3.6 power of A/Q to a factor of ~1000 for (76<=Z<=82)/O and temperature in the range 2-4 MK. This acceleration is believed to occur in islands of magnetic reconnection on open field lines in solar flares and jets. It has been recently found that the large shock-accelerated "gradual" SEP events have a broad range of source plasma temperatures; 69% have coronal temperatures of T < 1.6 MK, while 24% have T ~ 3 MK, the latter suggesting a seed population containing residual impulsive suprathermal ions. Most of the large event-to-event abundance variations and their time variation are largely explained by variations in T magnified by A/Q-dependent fractionation during transport. However, the non-thermal variance of impulsive SEP events (~30%) exceeds that of the ~3 MK gradual events (~10%) so that several small impulsive events must be averaged together with the ambient plasma to form the seed population for shock acceleration in these events.