SOLAR-WIND COMPOSITION MEASUREMENTS BY THE ULYSSES SWICS EXPERIMENT DURING TRANSIENT SOLAR-WIND FLOWS

For the March/April 1991 time period, the alpha/proton abundance ratio, the proton kinetic temperature and speed distributions, and the relative abundance of O+7 to O+6 is determined over each 13-minute duty cycle of the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) experiment on Ulysses. The ratio O+7/O+6 (as a relative measure of ionization temperature) is shown to be useful in identifying possible coronal mass ejection (CME) events. We report measurements of silicon/oxygen abundance ratios and silicon and oxygen charge state distributions in the solar wind during a CME event and compare these compositions to a ''normal'' solar wind time period.