Survey of ionic charge states of solar energetic particle events during the first year of ACE Available to Purchase

The ionic charge state distributions of solar energetic particle events are determined with ACE SEPICA on an event by event basis, over the time period from launch through the end of 1998. Because of the large geometric factor of SEPICA the observations can be extended to events with very low fluxes. The study is confined to the most abundant species O, Ne, Mg, and Fe. Mean charge states for Fe are observed to vary between ≈11 for CME related events and ≈20 for small events that carry signatures of impulsive events. For these events all elements up to Mg, appear almost fully ionized. The charge states of all species follow the same trend as that of Fe in their variation from event to event. A comparison of observed mean charge states with a model assuming thermal equilibrium shows a general agreement with temperatures ranging from $1.2–10⋅106 K.$ However, noticeable deviations from charge states at a unique temperature for all species are seen for O at high and for Mg at both high and low charge states, which may suggest the presence of other processes. A distinct correlation is observed between the charge states and the overabundance of heavy ions in comparison with O. It remains puzzling that events with substantial deviations from coronal abundance accelerate almost fully stripped ions, which do not lend themselves easily to fractionation processes based on mass and charge.