Observational methods for solar origin diagnostics of energetic protons

TL;DR

This paper reviews observational techniques to identify the solar sources of energetic protons, discusses uncertainties, and introduces a new quality factor to improve source association accuracy.

Contribution

It proposes a novel quality factor for better certainty in associating solar energetic protons with their flare and CME origins.

Findings

A new quality factor for source identification.

Correlations between proton intensity and solar event properties.

Discussion of uncertainties in observational methods.

Abstract

The aim of the present report is to outline the observational methods used to determine the solar origin - in terms of flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - of the in situ observed solar energetic protons. Several widely used guidelines are given and different sources of uncertainties are summarized and discussed. In the present study, a new quality factor is proposed as a certainty check on the so-identified flare-CME pairs. In addition, the correlations between the proton peak intensity and the properties of their solar origin are evaluated as a function of the quality factor.