Cross sections produced by ^3^He reactions

DOI

The ^3^He abundance in impulsive solar energetic particle (SEP) events is enhanced up to several orders of magnitude compared to its photospheric value of [^3^He]/[^4^He] = 1-3 x 10^-4^. Interplanetary magnetic field and timing observations suggest that these events are related to solar flares. Observations of ^3^He in flare-accelerated ions would clarify the relationship between these two phenomena. Energetic ^3^He interactions in the solar atmosphere produce gamma-ray nuclear-deexcitation lines, both lines that are also produced by protons and {alpha} particles and lines that are essentially unique to ^3^He. Gamma-ray spectroscopy can, therefore, reveal enhanced levels of accelerated ^3^He. In this paper, we identify all significant deexcitation lines produced by ^3^He interactions in the solar atmosphere. We evaluate their production cross sections and incorporate them into our nuclear deexcitation-line code. We find that enhanced ^3^He can affect the entire gamma-ray spectrum. We identify gamma-ray line features for which the yield ratios depend dramatically on the ^3^He abundance. We determine the accelerated ^3^He/{alpha} ratio by comparing these ratios with flux ratios measured previously from the gamma-ray spectrum obtained by summing the 19 strongest flares observed with the Solar Maximum Mission Gamma-Ray Spectrometer. All six flux ratios investigated show enhanced ^3^He, confirming earlier suggestions. The ^3^He/{alpha} weighted mean of these new measurements ranges from 0.05 to 0.3 (depending on the assumed accelerated {alpha}/proton ratio) and has a <1 x 10^-3^ probability of being consistent with the photospheric value. With the improved code, we can now exploit the full potential of gamma-ray spectroscopy to establish the relationship between flare-accelerated ions and ^3^He-rich SEPs.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.18330196
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/833/196
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/833/196
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/833/196
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/833/196
Provenance
Creator Murphy R.J.; Kozlovsky B.; Share G.H.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2017
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics