Faculty of Science and Technology

Solar energetic particles (SEPs) are accelerated during flares and coronal mass ejections at the Sun. They can escape from the solar corona into interplanetary space and reach eg near-Earth locations, where they pose a significant radiation risk to humans in space and satellite hardware. This talk will review our understanding of the origin and propagation of SEPs, based on a large body of data gathered by spacecraft detectors and theoretical models of energetic particle propagation. It will focus in particular on recent modelling work analysing the role of cross-field diffusion in SEP transport, by means of test particle simulations.