Interpretation of the Radiation of Coronal Suprathermal Streams. I.

This is the first part of a series of two articles aimed at revealing the role of the Compton effect in scattering of the solar photospheric radiation by coronal suprathermal streams. The simplest situation of a single beam of electrons gyrating around the strength lines of magnetic field is considered. Attention is focused on the height-independent problem, in which the role of the spatial angle of incident radiation is ignored. Analytical expressions for the frequency change of interacting photons and for the proper cross-section of the scattering process are derived. The results of numerical calculations show that the effect may by significant even for moderate energies of fast electrons and will be observable only if the fractional density of fast electrons is not too small.