Comparing Shock geometry from MHD simulation to that from the Q/A-scaling analysis

In large SEP events, ions can be accelerated at CME-driven shocks to very high energies. Spectra of heavy ions in many large SEP events show features such as roll-overs or spectral breaks. In some events when the spectra are plotted in energy/nucleon they can be shifted relatively to each other so that the spectra align. The amount of shift is charge-to-mass ratio (Q/A) dependent and varies from event to event. In the work of Li et al. (2009), the Q/A dependences of the scaling is related to shock geometry when the CME-driven shock is close to the Sun. For events where multiple in-situ spacecraft observations exist, one may expect that different spacecraft are connected to different portions of the CME-driven shock that have different shock geometries, therefore yielding different Q/A dependence. At the same time, shock geometry can be also obtained from MHD simulations. This means we can compare shock geometry from two completely different approaches: one from MHD simulation and the other from in-situ spectral fitting. In this work, we examine this comparison for selected events.