Time-dependent coronal shock acceleration of energetic solar flare particles

Abstract

A global time-dependent model is presented for the coronal and interplanetary shock acceleration and propagation of energetic solar flare particles. The calculations are carried out to help prove that coronal shock acceleration of solar flare particles is responsible for energetic solar flare event data gathered in interplanetary space. The model is based on the theory of diffusive shock acceleration, and requires particle speeds to be much greater than bulk velocities. Also, sufficient scattering must occur upstream and downstream of the shock for the particle scattering mean free path to be smaller than the characteristic scale lengths, which causes the same particles to encounter the shock repeatedly. A spherically symmetric shock wave is assumed, which leads to the same emission configuration for impulsively and monoenergetically emitted particles. Consideration is given to acceleration by compression at the shock front, adiabatic deceleration in the divergent downstream flow, the temporal evolution of the shock and the three-dimensional geometry of the corona. The model is used to generate normalized proton omnidirectional distributions at 1 AU and at the shock front. The spectral exhibit trends similar to those in observational data, especially proton acceleration times and the proton distribution profiles at 1 AU.