Paper detail

The effect of drifts on the decay phase of SEP events

We study the effect of the magnetic gradient and curvature drifts on the pitch-angle dependent transport of solar energetic particles (SEPs), focusing on 3 - 36 MeV protons. By considering observers located at various positions in the heliosphere, we investigate how drifts may alter the measured intensity-time profiles and energy spectra. We focus on the decay phase of solar energetic proton events during which a temporal invariant spectrum and disappearing spatial intensity gradients are often observed; a phenomenon known as the 'reservoir effect' or the 'SEP flood'. We study the effects of drifts by solving the focused transport equation for nominal Parker solar wind configurations and for a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generated solar wind containing a corotating interaction region (CIR). The latter configuration contains a magnetic bottle structure, with one bottleneck at the Sun and the other at the CIR. It is illustrated that observers magnetically connected close to the edges of the particle injection site can experience, as a result of drifts, a sudden drop in the intensities occurring at different times for different energies such that no SEP flood phenomenon is established. In the magnetic bottle, this effect is enhanced due to the presence of magnetic field gradients strengthening the nominal particle drifts. We also show that interplanetary cross-field diffusion may mitigate these effects of drifts. We conclude that particle drifts can in some cases substantially modify the decay phase of SEP events, especially if the solar wind contains compression regions or shock waves where the drifts are enhanced. This is, for example, the case for our CIR solar wind configuration generated with a 3D MHD model, where the effect of drifts is strong. A similar decay rate in different energy channels and for different observers requires thus the mitigation of the effect of drifts.