Extreme fluxes in solar energetic particle events: Methodological and physical limitationsстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 20 мая 2014 г.
Аннотация:All available data on the largest solar proton events (SPEs), or extreme solar energetic particle (SEP) events, for the period from 1561 up to now are analyzed. Under consideration are observational, methodical and physical problems of energy spectrum presentation for SEP fluxes (fluences) near the Earth’s orbit. Special attention is paid to the study of the distribution function for extreme fluences of SEPs by their sizes. The authors managed to advance, at least, in three aspects: 1) a form of distribution function obtained earlier by the data for three cycles of solar activity has been completely confirmed by the data for 41 solar cycles; 2) early estimates of extremely large fluences in the past have been critically revised, and their values were found to be overestimated; 3) extremely large SEP fluxes is shown to obey a probabilistic distribution, so a concept of “upper limit flux” does not contain a strict physical sense, but serves as an important empirical restriction. The SEP fluxes may be only characterized by quite certain probabilities of their appearance, with a sharp break of the spectrum in the range of large fluences (or low probabilities). It is emphasized that modern data of observations and methods of investigations do not allow, for the present, to resolve precisely the problem of spectrum break and estimate maximum potentialities of solar accelerator(s). This restricts considerably an extrapolation of obtained results for the past and future, for the epochs with different levels of solar activity.