Preferential enhancements of the solar flare-accelerated nuclei carbon to zinc from about 20-300 MeV/nucleon

Abstract

IMP 8 satellite measurements with a charged-particle telescope are examined which show that three large solar flares in late 1977 displayed preferential enhancements of abundances from C through Fe at energies of about 20 to 400 MeV/nucleon. It is found that the differential energy spectra of C, O, Mg, Si, and Fe, as well as protons and helium, are best fitted by power laws in energy per nucleon or rigidity with an index of 2.3 + or - 0.2, that the spectra of most of the even-Z nuclei have essentially the same slope, and that all the enhancements were independent of energy in the range from 20 to 300 MeV/nucleon. A plot of enhancement factor vs. Z is presented which clearly demonstrates the preferential enhancement of abundances with increasing Z in one of the solar flares, where the nuclei reached such high energies that they must have escaped the corona fully stripped of electrons. Implications for theories of solar-flare acceleration of the nuclei are considered.