Alec MacKinnon Submitted: 08-Jan-2004 06:35
We study collisional slowing-down and thermalisation of fast electrons in a homogeneous, isothermal source region. As pointed out by Emslie, warm target modifications to electron transport may have important implications for total deduced fast electron energy. We employ a linearised Fokker-Planck description including both systematic energy loss and energy diffusion. Photon spectra modelled in this way merge power-law and thermal components seamlessly. We fit our results to RHESSI X-ray spectra from events on 17 March, 14 April, 21 and 22 August 2002, deducing in particular values of electron low energy cutoff and total injected electron energy.
Participants: A MacKinnon, R Galloway, E Kontar, P Helander
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