Parker Solar Probe observations of helical structures as boundaries for energetic particles
Abstract
Energetic particle transport in the interplanetary medium is known to be affected by magnetic structures. It has been demonstrated for solar energetic particles in near-Earth orbit studies, and also for the more energetic cosmic rays. In this paper, we show observational evidence that intensity variations of solar energetic particles can be correlated with the occurrence of helical magnetic flux tubes and their boundaries. The analysis is carried out using data from Parker Solar Probe orbit 5, in the period 2020 May 24 to June 2. We use FIELDS magnetic field data and energetic particle measurements from the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS⊙IS) suite on the Parker Solar Probe. We identify magnetic flux ropes by employing a real-space evaluation of magnetic helicity, and their potential boundaries using the Partial Variance of Increments method. We find that energetic particles are either confined within or localized outside of helical flux tubes, suggesting that the latter act as transport boundaries for particles, consistent with previously developed viewpoints.
Additional Information
© 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) Accepted 2021 September 9. Received 2021 September 9; in original form 2021 June 22. This research is partially supported by the Parker Solar Probe mission and the IS⊙IS project (contract NNN06AA01C) and a subcontract to the University of Delaware from Princeton University (SUB0000165). Additional support is acknowledged from the NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) program (NNX17AB79G) and the Heliospheric Supporting Research (HSR) program (80NSSC18K1210 and 80NSSC18K1648). Parker Solar Probe was designed, built, and is now operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory as part of NASA's LWS program (contract NNN06AA01C). SS has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 776262 (AIDA, www.aida-space.eu). We thank the IS⊙IS team for its support as well as the FIELDS and SWEAP teams for cooperation. DATA AVAILABILITY. The IS⊙IS data and visualization tools are available to the community at https://spacephysics.princeton.edu/missions-instruments/isois; data are also available via the NASA Space Physics Data Facility (https://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/).Attached Files
Published - stab2659.pdf
Accepted Version - 2109.04571.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 112477
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20211215-622281000
- NASA
- NNN06AA01C
- NASA
- SUB0000165
- NASA
- NNX17AB79G
- NASA
- 80NSSC18K1210
- NASA
- 80NSSC18K1648
- NASA
- NNN06AA01C
- European Research Council (ERC)
- 776262
- Created
-
2021-12-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-12-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Space Radiation Laboratory