SH054-02
Energetic Particles near the Sun from Parker Solar Probe
Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 11:42
Virtual
Nathan Schwadron1, David J McComas2, Eric R Christian3, Christina Cohen4, Alan C Cummings5, Andrew Davis6, Mihir Indrajit Desai7, Joe Giacalone8, Matthew E Hill9, Colin Joyce2, Stamatios Mike Krimigis10, Allan Wayne Labrador11, Richard A Leske5, Olga Malandraki12, William H Matthaeus13, Ralph L McNutt Jr14, Richard Mewaldt4, Donald G Mitchell9, Jamie Sue Rankin15, Edmond C Roelof9, Edward C Stone16, Jamey R Szalay2, Mark E Wiedenbeck17, Stuart D Bale18, Justin Christophe Kasper19, Anthony W Case20, Kelly E Korreck20, Robert J MacDowall21, Marc Pulupa22, Michael Louis Stevens20, Alexis P Rouillard23, Jonathan T. Niehof24 and Wouter Christiaan de Wet25, (1)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Space Science Center, Durham, NH, United States, (2)Princeton University, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton, NJ, United States, (3)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)Caltech, Pasadena, CA, United States, (5)CALTECH, Pasadena, CA, United States, (6)California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States, (7)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (8)University of Arizona, Planetary Sciences, Tucson, AZ, United States, (9)Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, United States, (10)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Space, Laurel, MD, United States, (11)Mail Code 290-17, Pasadena, CA, United States, (12)National Observatory of Athens, IAASARS, Athens, Greece, (13)University of Delaware, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Newark, DE, United States, (14)Johns Hopkins Univ/APL, Laurel, MD, United States, (15)Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States, (16)California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (17)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (18)University of California Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States, (19)University of Michigan, Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, (20)Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, United States, (21)NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States, (22)Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (23)IRAP/CNRS, Toulouse, France, (24)Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (25)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
Abstract:
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission recently plunged through the inner heliosphere to perihelia at ~24 million km (~35 solar radii), much closer to the Sun than any prior human made object. Onboard PSP, the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISʘIS) instrument suite made groundbreaking measurements of solar energetic particles (SEPs). Here we provide an overview of the near-Sun energetic particle radiation environment over PSP’s first five orbits, which reveal where and how energetic particles are energized and transported. We find a great variety of energetic particle events accelerated both locally and remotely. We summarize recent breakthroughs by the ISʘIS team concerning co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs), “impulsive” SEP events driven by acceleration near the Sun, events related to Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and the sources of energetic particle variability including effects likely associated with magnetic reconnection, and variations in the magnetic field of the Sun and inner heliosphere. We discuss the effects of the anomalous magnetic field structure within CIRs and patchy energetic particle distributions near current sheets and magnetic discontinuities. These ISʘIS observations made so close to the Sun provide critical information for investigating the near-Sun transport and energization of solar energetic particles that was difficult to resolve from prior observations. The wide-ranging ISʘIS studies summarized here mark another major milestone with humanity’s reconnaissance of the near-Sun environment and provide direct observations of the energetic particle radiation environment in the region just above the sub-Alfvenic corona.
