Auroral bremsstrahlung spectra in the atmosphere.

A procedure for computing the bremsstrahlung X-ray flux generated by auroral electrons in a plane, parallel atmosphere is described in detail. An integral expression which gives the X-ray flux at a specified photon energy and atmospheric depth for an arbitrary incident electron spectrum is set up. Some examples of X-ray spectra obtained from the numerical solution of this multidimensional integral are illustrated and in several cases are compared with previous Monte Carlo results. The energy deposition by bremsstrahlung X-rays can be determined from their local flux spectra.