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Abstract

Solar particle events that are rich in ³He typically also exhibit large overabundances of heavy and ultraheavy ions that increase with the mass of the ions. To explain these observations we apply our charge-consistent acceleration model, which takes into account the acceleration efficiency as a function of the charge to mass ratio of the ion, as well as the charge-dependent Coulomb energy losses, to consider the acceleration of ions within a wide range of their nuclear charge. Because the considerations of particle acceleration were restricted so far by tabulated values of ionization and recombination coefficients that were available only for a limited set of ions, we make use of our method developed earlier and calculate the rates of ions resembling the three representative mass groups of ultraheavy ions. We demonstrate that smaller Coulomb losses together with higher acceleration efficiency result in the enhancements of heavy and ultraheavy ions, in accordance with recent observations. We also conclude that the existing measurements of ultraheavy ions in impulsive solar energetic particle events provide evidence in favor of a magnetic turbulence in the acceleration region with spectral index S ≥ 2.