Particle propagation channels in the solar wind

The intensities of low energy solar-interplanetary electrons and ions at 1 AU occasionally change in a square wave manner. The changes may be increases or decreases and they typically have durations of from one hour to a few hours. In some cases these channels are bounded by discontinuities in the interplanetary field and the plasma properties differ from the surrounding solar wind. In one case solar flare particles were confined to a channel of width 3 x 10 to the 6th km at Earth. At the Sun this dimension extrapolates to about 12,000 km, a size comparable to small flares.