Energetic Particles and Coronal Mass Ejections

Stephen Kahler

Abstract

An association between solar energetic particle (SEP) events and CMEs has been known for some time.  Here I review some recent work on this relationship.  Comparisons of the peak intensities (I) of 2.1 to 2.5 and 18 to 22 MeV proton events with the speeds (V) of the associated CMEs near the Sun were done for events selected  for the ISTP Workshop.  The SEP intensities were taken from the GSFC particle detectors on the Wind and IMP-8 spacecraft, and the CME speeds from the LASCO coronagraph on the SOHO spacecraft.  A second comparison was done with energetic particle intensities measured on the Helios spacecraft and CME speeds from the SOLWIND coronagraph for interplanetary shock events analyzed by Sheeley et al. (1985).  The data points from the two sets of events at different epochs agree quite well and show correlation coefficients of r = 0.6 to 0.7 for the comparison of log I against log V.  More recent studies have related the observed energetic electron events to CMEs and attempted to determine what additional conditions of the corona might be important in determining the peak intensities and profiles of the energetic particle events.
 

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