用蒙特卡罗方法研究质子在航天器内部充电中的作用

介绍了航天器内部充电的基本物理机制, 重点研究了质子在内部充电中的作用. 用蒙特卡罗方法模拟质子在介质中的输运过程, 计算了简化的平板介质在一定通量的粒子环境中的内部充电情况. 结果表明, 介质内部最大电场与入射质子能量有关, 当质子能量达到14 MeV时候, 内部电场最强; 当质子与电子的入射数目相同, 并且材料参数一样时, 质子产生的最大电场大于电子产生的最大电场. 选取2004年7月26日TC-2卫星姿控分系统故障前的质子和电子通量数据, 分别计算了二者可能引起的内部最大电场. 计算结果表明,质子产生的最大电场比电子产生的最大电场小2~4个数量级, 并且远小于击穿电场; 在某些极端情况下, 例如质子产生的电场和电子产生的电场方向一致的时候, 电场的叠加会使局地电场得到加强.      

Sensing the Earth’s low ionosphere during solar flares using VLF signals and goes solar X-ray data

An analysis of D-region electron density height profile variations, induced by four isolated solar X-ray flares during period from September 2005 to December 2006, based on the amplitude and the phase delay perturbation of 22.1 kHz signal trace from Skelton (54.72 N, 2.88 W) to Belgrade (44.85 N, 20.38 E), coded GQD, was carried out. Solar flare data were taken from NOAA GOES12 satellite one-minute listings. For VLF data acquisition and recordings at the Institute of Physics, Belgrade, Serbia, the AbsPAL system was used. Starting from LWPCv21 code (Ferguson, 1998), the variations of the Earth-ionosphere waveguide characteristic parameters, sharpness and reflection height, were estimated during the flare conditions. It was found that solar flare events affected the VLF wave propagation in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide by changing the lower ionosphere electron density height profile, in a different way, for different solar flare events.     

On the spatial extent of the proton radiation belt from solar cell output variation of the Akebono satellite

Output current of silicon solar cells of Akebono satellite orbiting in the inner magnetosphere decreased from 13 A in 1989 to about 7 A in 2009, due to accumulated damage by energetic particles. A fair correlation between the monthly decrease rate of solar cell output current and trapped proton flux was found between 1989 and 1992, indicating that trapped energetic protons are responsible for the solar cell degradation. Simple variation from month to month was dominated by a fluctuation with one-year period and the correlation was not discernible after 1993. On the other hand, during orbiting the earth, another kind of decrease of output current emerged at low altitude above the sub-solar point, i.e., in the midst of sunlit condition. The decrease was larger in later years. The fact indicates more prominent temperature effect in the later years because of progress of the degradation. By removing data affected by the orbit condition above, variation from the same month in the previous year shows a clear oscillation due to orbit precession correlated with trapped energetic proton flux up to 1996. The amplitude of the annual variation oscillation tends to be larger than that expected from a degradation model based on energetic proton distribution of the NASA’s AP8 model. The larger oscillation amplitude suggests that the proton radiation belt was more sharply localized than given by the AP8 model throughout the early half of 1990s.     

一种新的太阳质子事件警报方法的探讨

本文分析了第21太阳活动周后半期的太阳质子耀斑硬X射线辐射资料, 发现它们的峰值流量、积分流量、上升沿斜率、X光子的最高能量和持续时间等物理参数之间有着不同于非质子耀斑的相关性。据此, 本文采用模糊聚类分析法, 对21太阳活动周期间(1980.2—1986.2)的质子事件进行预报试验。其报准率为88.5%, 虚报率为53.1%, 漏报率为11.5%。本文提供了基于X射线辐射特征的太阳质子事件警报的新途径和方法。     

Nitric oxide density enhancements due to solar flares

A differential emission measure technique is used to determine flare spectra using solar observations from the soft X-ray instruments aboard the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics Dynamics and Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment satellites. We examine the effect of the solar flare soft X-ray energy input on the nitric oxide (NO) density in the lower thermosphere. The retrieved spectrum of the 28 October 2003 X18 flare is input to a photochemical thermospheric NO model to calculate the predicted flare NO enhancements. Model results are compared to Student Nitric Oxide Explorer Ultraviolet Spectrometer observations of this flare. We present results of this comparison and show that the model and data are in agreement. In addition, the NO density enhancements due to several flares are studied. We present results that show large solar flares can deposit the same amount of 0.1–2 and 0.1–7 nm energy to the thermosphere during a relatively short time as the Sun normally deposits in one day. The NO column density nearly doubles when the daily integrated energy above 5 J m⁻² is doubled.     

Some Properties of Microwave Emission From Flaring Regions

A study is made of the differences in the polarization distribution and other characteristics of microwave emission for several active regionswith high flare productivity. Conclusions are drawn about the magnetic field structure of these regions at coronal heights.     

A tentative statistical analysis of flare events observed by NoRH and NoRP

In this paper, we report the statistical analysis of flare events observed by NoRH during 1992–2005 and NoRP during 1994–2005. We give the power law indices for the frequency distribution of peak brightness temperature which is 1.87 ± 0.05 for 17 GHz observation and is 1.64 ± 0.04 for 34 GHz observation. We also present the frequency variation of power law indices for peak flux and total energy of flare for NoRP observation, which is mono-increasing from 1 to 17 GHz.     

Correlation between solar flare productivity and photospheric vector magnetic fields

Studying the statistical correlation between the solar flare productivity and photospheric magnetic fields is very important and necessary. It is helpful to set up a practical flare forecast model based on magnetic properties and improve the physical understanding of solar flare eruptions. In the previous study ([Cui, Y.M., Li, R., Zhang, L.Y., He, Y.L., Wang, H.N. Correlation between solar flare productivity and photospheric magnetic field properties 1. Maximum horizontal gradient, length of neutral line, number of singular points. Sol. Phys. 237, 45–59, 2006]; from now on we refer to this paper as ‘Paper I’), three measures of the maximum horizontal gradient, the length of the neutral line, and the number of singular points are computed from 23990 SOHO/MDI longitudinal magnetograms. The statistical relationship between the solar flare productivity and these three measures is well fitted with sigmoid functions. In the current work, the three measures of the length of strong-shear neutral line, total unsigned current, and total unsigned current helicity are computed from 1353 vector magnetograms observed at Huairou Solar Observing Station. The relationship between the solar flare productivity and the current three measures can also be well fitted with sigmoid functions. These results are expected to be beneficial to future operational flare forecasting models.     

Protein expression profile changes in human fibroblasts induced by low dose energetic protons

Extrapolation of known radiation risks to the risks from low dose and low dose-rate exposures of human population, especially prolonged exposures of astronauts in the space radiation environment, relies in part on the mechanistic understanding of radiation induced biological consequences at the molecular level. While some genomic data at the mRNA level are available for cells or animals exposed to radiation, the data at the protein level are still lacking. Here, we studied protein expression profile changes using Panorama antibody microarray chips that contain antibodies to 224 proteins (or their phosphorylated forms) involved in cell signaling that included mostly apoptosis, cytoskeleton, cell cycle and signal transduction. Normal human fibroblasts were cultured until fully confluent and then exposed to 2 cGy of 150 MeV protons at high-dose rate. The proteins were isolated at 2 or 6 h after exposure and labeled with Cy3 for the irradiated cells and with Cy5 for the control samples before loading onto the protein microarray chips. The intensities of the protein spots were analyzed using ScanAlyze software and normalized by the summed fluorescence intensities and the housekeeping proteins. The results showed that low dose protons altered the expression of more than 10% of the proteins listed in the microarray analysis in various protein functional groups. Cell cycle (24%) related proteins were induced by protons and most of them were regulators of G1/S-transition phase. Comparison of the overall protein expression profiles, cell cycle related proteins, cytoskeleton and signal transduction protein groups showed significantly more changes induced by protons compared with other protein functional groups.     

射电爆发显著事件与Ⅱ型爆发

本文分析了北京天文台2840MHz射电望远镜,1989年1月-1993年12月期间观测到的太阳射电爆发的显着事件与米波Ⅱ型、Ⅳ型爆发的对应关系,从相关结果来看,爆发的峰值流量越高△T越短,这说明当太阳流量越大,高达500s.f.u.以上时,Ⅱ型爆发会在爆发的峰值前后很短时间内发生,可能与粒子的加速有关。