Ionic charge state measurements in solar energetic particle events

With the launch of the Advanced Composition Explorer, it has become possible through the SEPICA instrument to make direct ionic charge state measurements for individual Solar Energetic Particle events. In large events, the charge state may even be measured as a function of time, revealing changes that may be created by phenomena such as injections from different acceleration mechanisms, or confinement by magnetic field structures. The charge state can be a sensitive indicator of separate SEP populations. Several examples of SEP events will be presented. One of these, the November, 1997 event, displayed a trend in which the mean charge state for several ions increased with energy. These measurements may be the result of several processes, including a mixture of plasma with different source and acceleration histories, and abundance formation and possibly additional charge state modification by collisional or other means in the corona. A wide range of iron charge states have been measured for a variety of SEP events, ranging from =10+ to 20+. The mean charge states of C, O, Ne, Mg and Si all increased as the iron charge state increased. In events with the highest iron charge states, there were abundance enhancements in Ne with respect to oxygen in those cases, even though the mass/charge of the O and Ne were similar. In events with the lowest iron charge states, all these ions except Mg showed mean charge states generally consistent with coronal material of an equilibrium temperature of 1.3-1.6 million degrees K