SOLPENCO: A solar particle engineering code

Abstract

We present SOLPENCO (SOLar Particle ENgineering COde), the first step towards an operational tool able to quantitatively predict proton flux and fluence profiles of solar energetic particle (SEP) events associated with interplanetary shocks. The main components of this code are the following: a data base containing synthetic proton flux and fluence profiles for a set of 448 different scenarios at 1 AU and at 0.4 AU, for proton energies ranging from 0.125 to 64 MeV; and a user-friendly interface which permits rapid acquisition, by interpolation, of the flux and cumulative fluence profiles in the upstream part of an SEP event for a given solar-interplanetary scenario selected by the user (from among 697,800 cases). SOLPENCO also provides an estimate for the transit time and average speed of the CME-driven shock. We have started the validation of the outputs of this code by comparing them with several observed and modeled SEP events. As an example, we discuss here the case of the 4–6 April 2000 event. The main conclusions are that the code fits well the peak flux for several energy channels, and that the average parameters used to synthesize the flux and fluence profiles must be studied in more detail by performing a statistical study with a large set of observed and modeled SEP scenarios.