The modulation of cosmic rays in the high latitude heliosphere: A computer simulation

Modulation models based on the numerical solution of Parker's transport equation for galactic cosmic rays in the heliosphere make clear predictions about modulation in the high latitude heliosphere. However, for these predictions certain assumptions have to be made, for example, what the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) looks like above the solar poles and what the spatial dependence of the diffusion coefficients are. For this presentation the general predictions of a standard drift model for the modulation of cosmic rays in the high latitude heliosphere, in particular predictions for the Ulysses trajectory, are discussed and critically reviewed. Preliminary results from Ulysses show a significant increase in the solar wind speed towards higher latitudes. The effects of this strong latitudinal dependence together with different modifications of the HMF at these high latitudes on the apparently too large diffusion and drifts predicted by current models are also shown.     

Modulation of Cosmic Rays and Anomalous Components by CIRs

CIRs produce clearly visible recurrent modulation in the intensity of cosmic rays and anomalous components, but are not principally responsible for determining the overall global level of modulation. However, the localized variations imposed by CIRs in the parameters for propagation of energetic particles through the solar wind provide useful diagnostics for testing models of the propagation against observations. A principal result from Ulysses observations of CIR-induced variations is that the variations persist to very high latitudes, well beyond the range where CIRs are observed. This has driven theoretical models to provide for enhanced latitude transport of energetic particles. On the other hand, observations of Jovian electron intensities vs. latitude do not support enhanced latitude transport. This chapter contains a summary of the interaction between observations and models for the effects of CIRs, and its impact on the understanding of the physics of modulation. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cosmic Rays at High Heliolatitudes

The Ulysses spacecraft has been the first to orbit the Sun over its poles and to explore the heliosphere at these high heliolatitudes. It has now completed two fast latitude scans, one at solar minimum and one at solar maximum. Since its launch in October 1990, this mission has led to several surprising discoveries concerning energetic particles, cosmic rays, Jovian electrons, the solar wind, the heliospheric magnetic field and the global features of the heliosphere. This review addresses mainly the propagation and modulation of cosmic rays and other charged particles, from both an observational and theoretical point of view, with emphasis on what has been learned from exploring the inner heliosphere to high heliolatitudes. This is done for solar minimum and maximum conditions. The review is concluded with a summary of the main scientific discoveries and insights gained so far from the Ulysses mission.     

Solar wind corotating stream interaction regions out of the ecliptic plane: Ulysses

Ulysses plasma observations reveal that the forward shocks that commonly bound the leading edges of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) beyond 2 AU from the Sun at low heliographic latitudes nearly disappeared at a latitude of S26°. On the other hand, the reverse shocks that commonly bound the trailing edges of the CIRs were observed regularly up to S41.5°, but became weaker with increasing latitude. Only three CIR shocks have been observed poleward of S41.5°; all of these were weak reverse shocks. The above effects are a result of the forward waves propagating to lower heliographic latitudes and the reverse waves to higher latitudes with increasing heliocentric distance. These observational results are in excellent agreement with the predictions of a global model of solar wind flows that originate in a simple tilted-dipole geometry back at the Sun.     

Cosmic Rays Through the Solar Hale Cycle

The Ulysses spacecraft had been the first to orbit the Sun over its poles and to explore the heliosphere at these high heliolatitudes. It has now completed three fast latitude scans, two at solar minimum and one at solar maximum. Since its launch in October 1990, this mission has led to several surprising discoveries concerning energetic particles, cosmic rays, Jovian electrons, the solar wind, the heliospheric magnetic field and the global features of the heliosphere. This review addresses the propagation and modulation of cosmic rays and other charged particles from an observational point of view with emphasis on what has been learned from exploring the inner heliosphere to high heliolatitudes.     

CIR Associated Energetic Particles in the Inner and Middle Heliosphere

Energetic particles associated with Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) are observed throughout the inner and middle heliosphere, showing large positive (>100%/AU) radial intensity gradients. Their appearance at 1 AU is associated with the appearance of fast, recurrent solar wind streams. At several AU, CIR energetic particles are accelerated at shocks which propagate away from the interface of fast and slow solar wind streams. CIR energy spectra at 1 AU cover the range >35 keV to several MeV/amu; the spectra steepen above ∼1 MeV/amu, and show no turnover even at the lowest energies. The ion composition of CIRs is similar to solar material, but with significant differences that might be due to properties of the seed population and/or the acceleration process. This paper summarizes properties of energetic particles in CIRs as known through the early 1990s, prior to the launch of the Ulysses, and WIND spacecraft, whose new results are presented in Kunow, Lee et al. (1999) in this volume. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Interplanetary shock waves: Ulysses observations in and out of the ecliptic plane

Between its launch in October 1990 and the end of 1993, approximately 160 fast collisionless shock waves were observed in the solar wind by the Ulysses space probe. During the in-ecliptic part of the mission, to February 1992, the observed shock waves were first caused mainly by solar transient events following the solar maximum and the reorganisation of the large scale coronal fields. With the decay in solar activity, relatively stable Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) were observed betwen 3 and 5.4 AU, each associated with at least one forwardreverse shock pair. During the out-of-ecliptic phase of the orbit, from February 1992 onwards, CIRs and shock pairs associated with them continued to dominate the observations. From July 1992, Ulysses encountered the fast solar wind flow from the newly developed southern polar coronal hole, and from May 1993 remained in the unipolar magnetic region associated with this coronal hole. At latitudes beyond 30°, CIRs were associated almost exclusively with reverse shocks only. A comprehensive list of shock waves identified in the magnetic field and solar wind plasma data from Ulysses is given in Table 1. The principal characteristics were determined mainly from the magnetic field data. General considerations concerning the determination of shock characteristics are outlined in the Introduction.     

Modulation of Galactic Cosmic Rays at Solar Minimum

Cosmic ray particles respond to the heliospheric magnetic field in the expanding solar wind and its turbulence and therefore provide a unique probe for conditions in the changing heliosphere. During the last four years, concentrated around the solar minimum period of solar cycle 22, the exploration of the solar polar regions by the joint ESA/NASA mission Ulysses revealed the three-dimensional behavior of cosmic rays in the inner and middle heliosphere. Also during the last decades, the Pioneer and Voyager missions have greatly expanded our understanding of the structure and extent of the outer heliosphere. Simultaneously, numerical models describing the propagation of galactic cosmic rays are becoming sophisticated tools for interpreting and understanding these observations. We give an introduction to the subject of the modulation of galactic cosmic rays in the heliosphere during solar minimum. The modulation effects on cosmic rays of corotating interaction regions and their successors in the outer heliosphere are discussed in more detail by Gazis, McDonald et al. (1999) and McKibben, Jokipii et al. (1999) in this volume. Cosmic-ray observations from the Ulysses spacecraft at high heliographic latitudes are also described extensively in this volume by Kunow, Lee et al. (1999). This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Energetic Particles and Corotating Interaction Regions in the Solar Wind

This paper reviews three important effects on energetic particles of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) in the solar wind that are formed at the leading edges of high-speed solar wind streams originating in coronal holes. A brief overview of CIRs and their important features is followed by a discussion of CIR-associated modulations in the galactic cosmic ray intensity, with an emphasis on observations made by spacecraft particle telescope ‘anti-coincidence’ guards. Such guards combine high counting rates (hundreds of counts/s) and a lower rigidity response than neutron monitors to provide detailed information on the relationship between cosmic ray modulations and CIR structure. The modulation of Jovian electrons by CIRs is then described. Finally, the acceleration of ions to energies of ～20 MeV/n in the vicinity of CIRs is reviewed.     

Energetic particle observations at high heliographic latitudes

Energetic particles, accelerated in shocks which were associated with recurrent fast solar wind streams, were observed in high heliographic latitudes; fifteen such steams were included in the present study. Intensity variations ranged up to four orders of magnitude. Energy spectra were typically steeper near forward shocks than near reverse shocks. Electrons were observed only lated to the reverse shocks. Composition ratios in accelerated streams resembled those observed in fast CIR's. In periods between the recurrent acceleration regions elemental abundance ratios were similar to those of the anomalous cosmic rays (ACR). The intensity of the accelerated particles declined as the latitude of ULYSSES increased, probably due to the weakening of the shocks.     

Formation and Evolution of Corotating Interaction Regions and their Three Dimensional Structure

Corotating interaction regions are a consequence of spatial variability in the coronal expansion and solar rotation, which cause solar wind flows of different speeds to become radially aligned. Compressive interaction regions are produced where high-speed wind runs into slower plasma ahead. When the flow pattern emanating from the Sun is roughly time-stationary these compression regions form spirals in the solar equatorial plane that corotate with the Sun, hence the name corotating interaction regions, or CIRs. The leading edge of a CIR is a forward pressure wave that propagates into the slower plasma ahead, while the trailing edge is a reverse pressure wave that propagates back into the trailing high-speed flow. At large heliocentric distances the pressure waves bounding a CIR commonly steepen into forward and reverse shocks. Spatial variation in the solar wind outflow from the Sun is a consequence of the solar magnetic field, which modulates the coronal expansion. Because the magnetic equator of the Sun is commonly both warped and tilted with respect to the heliographic equator, CIRs commonly have substantial north-south tilts that are opposed in the northern and southern hemispheres. Thus, with increasing heliocentric distance the forward waves in both hemispheres propagate toward and eventually across the solar equatorial plane, while the reverse shocks propagate poleward to higher latitudes. This paper provides an overview of observations and numerical models that describe the physical origin and radial evolution of these complex three-dimensional (3-D) heliospheric structures. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Elemental abundances in corotating interaction regions at high solar latitudes

Throughout 1993, as the Ulysses spacecraft traveled from 23° to 45° south heliolatitude, the HI-SCALE instrument on the spacecraft measured a recurrent series of enhanced particle fluxes with a recurrence period of 26.5 days. These particles are accelerated from a background seed population by the corotating interaction regions (CIRs) associated with a southern solar polar coronal hole. Using the Wart detector telescope of the HI-SCALE instrument, we have analyzed the elemental abundances of C, N, O, and Fe relative to He for 0.5–4.0 MeV/nucl ions and Ne, Mg, and Si for 1.0–4.0 MeV/nucl ions in the CIRs. We compare the relative abundances to some previous measurements reported from 1 A.U. as well as with solar photosphere abundances. We note that HI-SCALE measurements of the heliolatitude dependence of the oxygen abundance and spectrum as reported by Lanzerottiet al. (1994) suggest that a substantial fraction of the seed population for the CIR-accelerated oxygen is likely to be the anomalous oxygen component of the cosmic rays.     

Corotating Particle Events

The corotating particle events give us a unique opportunity to probe the three-dimensional structures of the heliosphere. This is especially true if we have observations over a period of extreme stability of the CIRs, such as existed over the recent solar minimum. We discuss how the observations fit into the context of current heliospheric magnetic field models. The energetic particle signatures of CIRs throughout the regions of the heliosphere covered by the deep-space missions are reviewed. The CIRs accelerate these particles and at the same time modulate both the high energy galactic cosmic rays and the anomalous cosmic rays.     

Mechanisms for Latitudinal Transport of Energetic Particles in the Heliosphere

Energetic particles in the heliosphere, from relatively low-energy particles which are accelerated in Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) to galactic cosmic rays, are observed to propagate relatively easily in heliographic latitude. Two mechanisms for this transport appear possible: cross-field diffusion, or, in a recent model for the heliospheric magnetic field, by direct magnetic connection. The commonalties and differences of these two mechanisms are considered, and the need for future observations and modeling efforts are discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Magnetic Fields in the Inner Heliosphere

The structure of Heliospheric Magnetic Field (HMF) is a function of both the coronal conditions from which it originates and dynamic processes which take place in the solar wind. The division between the inner and outer regions of the heliosphere is the result of dynamic processes which form large scale structures with increasing heliocentric distance. The structure of the HMF is normally described in the reference frame based on Parker's geometric model, but is better understood as an extension of potential field models of the corona. The Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS) separates the two dominant polarities in the heliosphere; its large scale geometry near solar minimum is well understood but its topology near solar maximum remains to be investigated by Ulysses. At solar minimum, Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) dominate the near-equatorial heliosphere and extend their influence to mid-latitudes; the polar regions of the heliosphere are dominated by uniform fast solar wind streams and large amplitude, long wavelength, mostly transverse magnetic fluctuations. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) introduce transient variability into the large scale heliospheric structure and may dominate the inner heliosphere near solar maximum at all latitudes.     

On the off-ecliptic distributions of anomalous cosmic rays and their relation to the large-scale geometry of the heliospheric shock

The scenario explaining the origin of the anomalous component of cosmic rays (ACR) implies a close relation between these high energy particles and the solar wind termination shock representing their main acceleration region. Consequently, one should expect the ACR distributions in the heliosphere to reflect some information about the structure as well as the large-scale geometry of the shock. We study the influence of a non-spherically symmetric heliospheric shock on the off-ecliptic — i.e. high latitude — ACR distributions using a two-dimensional model including their anisotropic diffusion and drift in the heliospheric magnetic field as well as a solar wind flow dependent on the heliographic latitude. The model calculations are used to investigate the probability of a possible polar elongation of the heliospheric shock from observations of the distributions of the ACR at high latitudes during solar minimum conditions.     

ICMEs at High Latitudes and in the Outer Heliosphere

Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) propagate into the outer heliosphere, where they can have a significant effect on the structure, evolution, and morphology of the solar wind, particularly during times of high solar activity. They are known to play an important role in cosmic ray modulation and the acceleration of energetic particles. ICMEs are also believed to be associated with the large global transient events that swept through the heliosphere during the declining phases of solar cycles 21 and 22. But until recently, little was known about the actual behavior of ICMEs at large heliographic latitudes and large distances from the Sun. Over the past decade, the Ulysses spacecraft has provided in situ observations of ICMEs at moderate heliographic distances over a broad range of heliographic latitudes. More recently, observations of alpha particle enhancements, proton temperature depressions, and magnetic clouds at the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have begun to provide comparable information regarding the behavior of ICMEs at extremely large heliocentric distances. At the same time, advances in modeling have provided new insights into the dynamics and evolution of ICMEs and their effects on cosmic rays and energetic particles.     

Modeling of 3-D Corotating Cosmic-Ray Structures in the Heliosphere

We present a brief review of the modeling of corotating 3-dimensional features in heliospheric cosmic rays. The model heliosphere incorporates a wavy current sheet and Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs). We find that present models can qualitatively account for the observed extension of recurrent 26-day cosmic-ray variations to high heliospheric latitudes if perpendicular diffusion is significant. The recurrent enhancement of low-energy (MeV) particles accelerated at CIR-s is also shown to fit into this same picture.     

IMF connection for energetic protons observed at Ulysses via mid-latitude solar wind rarefaction regions

As Ulysses moved inward and southward from mid-1992 to early 1994 we noticed the occasional occurrence of inter-events, lasting about 10 days and falling between the recurrent events, observed at proton energies of 0.48–97 MeV, associated with Corotating Interaction Regions (CIR). These inter-events were present for several sequences of two or more solar rotations at intensity levels around 1% of those of the neighbouring main events. When we compared the Ulysses events with those measured on IMP-8 at 1 AU we saw that the inter-events appeared at Ulysses after the extended emission (>10 days) of large fluxes of solar protons of the same energy that lasted at least one solar rotation at 1 AU. The inter-events fell completely within the rarefaction regions (dv/dt<0) of the recurrent solar wind streams. The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) lines in the rarefactions map back to the narrow range of longitudes at the Sun which mark the eastern edge of the source region of the high speed stream. Thus the inter-events are propagating at mid-latitudes to Ulysses along field lines free from stream-stream interactions. They are seen in the 0.39–1.28 MeV/nucleon He, which exhibit a faster decay, but almost never in the 38–53 keV electrons. We show that the inter-events are unlikely to be accelerated by reverse shocks associated with the CIRs and that they are more likely to be accelerated by sequences of solar events and transported along the IMF in the rarefactions of the solar wind streams.     

Ulysses-UVCS Coordinated Observations

We present results from SOHO/UVCS measurements of the density and flow speed of plasma at the Sun and again of the same plasma by Ulysses/SWOOPS in the solar wind. UVCS made measurements at 3.5 and 4.5 solar radii and Ulysses was at 5.1 AU. Data were taken for nearly 2 weeks in May–June 1997 at 9–10 degrees north of the equator in the streamer belt on the east limb. Density and flow speed were compared to see if near Sun characteristics are preserved in the interplanetary medium. By chance, Ulysses was at the very northern edge of the streamer belt. Nevertheless, no evidence was found of fast wind or mixing of slow wind with fast wind coming from the northern polar coronal hole. The morphology of the streamer belt was similar at the beginning and end of the observing period, but was markedly different during the middle of the period. A corresponding change in density (but not flow speed) was noted at Ulysses. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.