Fermi-LAT Observation of Quiescent Solar Emission

Abstract

The Large Area Telescope (LAT), one of two instruments on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a pair-conversion detector designed to study the gamma-ray sky in the energy range 30 MeV to 300 GeV. Fermi has detected high-energy gamma rays from the quiet Sun produced by interactions of cosmic-ray nucleons with the solar surface, and cosmic-ray electrons with solar photons in the heliosphere. While the Sun was detected by EGRET on CGRO with low statistics, Fermi provides high-quality detections on a daily basis allowing variability to be addressed. Such observations will provide a probe of the extreme conditions near the solar surface and a monitor the modulation of cosmic rays over the inner heliosphere. We discuss the study of the quiescent solar emission including spectral analysis of its two components, disk and inverse Compton.