The impact of interplanetary transport on the charge spectra of heavy ions accelerated in solar energetic particle events Original Research Article

The effect of interplanetary propagation on the energy dependence of the iron mean ionic charge of solar cosmic rays is investigated. The diffusion–convection transport equation is solved numerically making use of a Monte-Carlo approach. The interplanetary propagation results in a shift of charge spectra towards lower energies due to adiabatic deceleration which becomes stronger as the particles’ scattering mean free path decreases. Taking the above effect into account, we compare predictions of our model of charge-consistent stochastic acceleration with recent ACE observations. A detailed analysis of two particle events shows that our model can give a consistent explanation of the observed iron charge and energy spectra, and allows to put constrains on the temperature, density, and the acceleration and escape time scales in the acceleration region.