Simulation of the Charge State and Energy Spectrum of Solar Energetic Iron

Abstract

In a nonequilibrium model that includes shock-induced acceleration, we simulate the charge state and energy spectra of solar energetic iron. In this model the mean charge state exhibits an energy dependence seen in recent large solar events by SAMPEX and ACE. The simulated energy spectrum is a power-law and charge distributions are roughly Gaussians. The density distributions are smooth in charge-momentum space, suggesting that the accelerated ion retains no memory of its initial charge as well as momentum conditions.