Solar activity relations in energetic electron events measured by the MESSENGER mission
- 1Universidad de Alcalá, Space Research Group, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain (l.rodriguezgarcia@edu.uah.es)
- 2Heliophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
- 3George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
- 4The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11101 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, USA
- 5Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland
- 6European Space Astronomy Center, European Space Agency, Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
- 7Institut fuer Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany
We perform a statistical study of the relations between the properties of solar energetic electron (SEE) events measured by the MESSENGER mission from 2010 to 2015 and the parameters of the respective parent solar activity phenomena to identify the potential correlations between them. During the time of analysis MESSENGER heliocentric distance varied between 0.31 and 0.47 au.
The main conclusion of the study is as follows. For this particular sample of events, with a majority of SEE events being widespread in heliolongitude and displaying relativistic electron intensity enhancements, a shock-related acceleration mechanism might be relevant in the acceleration of near-relativistic electrons. This conclusion is mainly based on three results. (1) The high and significant correlation found between the SEE peak intensities and the shock speed. (2) The ∼4 orders of magnitude in the SEE peak intensities for the same CME-driven shock speed that might be related to the presence of supra-thermal seed population that made local shock acceleration more efficient. (3) The asymmetry to the east of the range of connection angles (CAs) for which the SEE events present higher peak intensities and higher correlations with the solar activity, which might be related to the evolution of the magnetic field connection to the shock front. We note that the CA is defined as the angular distance between the footpoint of the magnetic field connecting to the spacecraft and the longitude of the source region.
How to cite: Rodríguez-García, L., Balmaceda, L., Gómez-Herrero, R., Kouloumvakos, A., Dresing, N., Lario, D., Zouganelis, Y., Fedeli, A., Espinosa Lara, F., Cernuda, I., Ho, G., Wimmer-Schweingruber, R., and Rodríguez-Pacheco, J.: Solar activity relations in energetic electron events measured by the MESSENGER mission, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-2518, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-2518, 2023.
