Abstract To investigate the possible solar source of high-energy protons, correlation coefficients between the peak intensities of E ≥ 100 MeV protons, I 100 , and the peak flux and fluence of solar soft X-ray (SXR) emission, and coronal mass ejection (CME) linear speed in the three longitudinal areas W0–W39, W40–W70 and W71–W90 have been calculated respectively. Classical correlation analysis shows that the correlation coefficients between CME speeds and \(I_{100}\) in the three longitudinal areas are 0.28±0.21, 0.35±0.21 and 0.04±0.30 respectively. The classical correlation coefficients between I 100 and SXR peak flux in the three longitudinal areas are 0.48±0.17, 0.72±0.13 and 0.02±0.30 respectively, while the correlation coefficients between I 100 and SXR fluence in the three longitudinal areas are 0.25±0.21, 0.84±0.07 and 0.10±0.30 respectively. Partial correlation analysis shows that for solar proton events with source location in the well connected region (W40–W70), only SXR fluence can significantly affect the peak intensity of E ≥ 100 MeV protons, but SXR peak flux has little influence on the peak intensities of E ≥ 100 MeV protons; moreover, CME speed has no influence on the peak intensities of E ≥ 100 MeV protons. We conclude that these findings provide statistical evidence that E ≥ 100 MeV protons may be mainly accelerated by concurrent flares.

Keywords Sun: coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — Sun: flares — (Sun:) particle emission

https://doi.org/10.1088/1674–4527/17/7/73