Longitudinal Extent of 3He-rich Solar Energetic Particle Events near 1 AU

Ever since the first ³He-enhanced solar energetic particle (SEP) event was reported in the literature in 1970, the exact mechanism by which the isotope is enhanced orders of magnitude higher than its solar wind value remains unknown.  But the source, acceleration, and transport of SEP events can only be studied by multi-point simultaneous in-situ measurement within the heliosphere.  However, multi-spacecraft observations of ³He-rich solar energetic particle (SEP) event are scarce.  Further observations are much needed in order to understand and properly constrain the source and transport of the remarkable enriched ³He SEP event. In this paper, we report six ³He-rich SEP events that were detected by ACE, STEREO and Solar Orbiter near 1 au during Solar Orbiter’s aphelion pass at the end of 2022 and early 2023.  Many of these events were detected simultaneously by at least two or three spacecraft at up to ~40° longitudal separation, while some events were detected by only a single spacecraft even though an adjacent spacecraft was less than 20° away. These fortuitous multi-spacecraft observations of ³He-rich SEP events thus provide us observational constraint on the acceleration and propagation of this special class of SEP events. In addition, we will show in this paper how multi-spacecraft measurements could also be used to constraint the solar source region of ³He-rich SEP event.