Solar Energetic Particle and the Heliospheric Current Sheet

Abstract

The effect of the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) on the propagation of solar energetic particles (SEPs) remains poorly known. In this study we address this question by surveying energetic (∼2.0–9.6 MeV nucleon–1) helium data acquired by the energetic particle acceleration, composition, and transport (EPACT) sensor on board the Wind spacecraft. A superposed epoch analysis of 319 HCS crossings made by Wind reveals a sharp drop in the SEP fluxes at the HCS for the low-energy channels and little change across the HCS for the high-energy channels. To help understand the statistical result, we studied a total of 15 SEP flux dropout (a decrease of ∼50% or more) events that coincided with the crossing of the HCS. One of the common features of these SEP events is that they were initiated in the western hemisphere but far away from the longitude of HCS crossings, suggesting that the source of SEPs was well connected initially but was cut off later after Wind moved to the opposite hemisphere (e.g., HCS crossing). Further analysis of the events suggests that the percentage of flux dropouts decreases with increasing energy. It is suggested that a strong scattering of MeV helium may have occurred as the particle gyroradius is comparable to the thickness of the current sheet. This study clearly provides solid evidence for the HCS as a barrier to suppressing SEP flux of MeV energies from the onset hemisphere to the other.