Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mapping The Distribution Of Electron Temperature And Fe Charge States In The Corona With Total Solar Eclipse Observations, Shadia Rifai Habbal, Miloslav Druckmüller, Huw Morgan, Adrian Daw, Judd Johnson, A. Ding, Martina Arndt, R. Esser, V. Rusin, I. Scholl

Physics Faculty Publications

The inference of electron temperature from the ratio of the intensities of emission lines in the solar corona is valid only when the plasma is collisional. Once collisionless, thermodynamic ionization equilibrium no longer holds, and the inference of an electron temperature and its gradient from such measurements is no longer valid. At the heliocentric distance where the transition from a collision-dominated to a collisionless plasma occurs, the charge states of different elements are established, or frozen-in. These are the charge states which are subsequently measured in interplanetary space. We show in this study how the 2006 March 29 and 2008 …