Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-02-15
Astrophys.J. 606 (2004) 542-554
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
18 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (1 May 2004)
Scientific paper
10.1086/382866
Because of the semi-collisional nature of the solar wind, the collisionless or exospheric approach as well as the hydrodynamic one are both inaccurate. However, the advantage of simplicity makes them useful for enlightening some basic mechanisms of solar wind acceleration. Previous exospheric models have been able to reproduce winds that were already nearly supersonic at the exobase, the altitude above which there are no collisions. In order to allow transonic solutions, a lower exobase has to be considered, in which case the protons are experiencing a non-monotonic potential energy profile. This is done in the present work. In this model, the electron velocity distribution in the corona is assumed non-thermal. Parametric results are presented and show that the high acceleration obtained does not depend on the details of the non-thermal distributions. This acceleration seems, therefore, to be a robust result produced by the presence of a sufficient number of suprathermal electrons. A method for improving the exospheric description is also given, which consists in mapping particle orbits in terms of their invariants of motion.
Issautier Karine
Lamy Herve
Maksimovic Milan
Meyer-Vernet Nicole
Zouganelis I.
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