MHD Simulation of Dynamic Heliosphere Around the Time When Voyager 1 Crossed the Termination Shock

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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2134 Interplanetary Magnetic Fields, 2144 Interstellar Gas, 7500 Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy

Scientific paper

An analysis of the dynamic heliosphere around the time when Voyager 1 (V-1 passed the termination shock (TS) on December 16, 2004 is performed using ideal MHD simulations. For input to this simulation, we use the Voyager 2 (V-2) solar wind data from September 10, 2002. We first provide a stationary solution of the 3-D outer heliosphere by assigning a set of LISM parameters as our outer boundary conditions so that V-1 crosses the TS at the end of 2004, and then the dynamical analysis is performed. We find that the TS position was always very near Voyager 1 from September 2002, when the TS-particle events became evident, to the time of the TS-crossing. During this period, the TS was pushed outward each time a high ram-pressure solar wind pulse arrived, but the maximum distance from V-1 was never greater than 15 AU. When the ram pressure was relatively low, the TS approached Voyager 1 to within 3 AU. At the end of the high ram-pressure wind associated with the Halloween events, the TS began to move inward very quickly and the TS crossed V1. The modeled TS crossing time is within 12 days of the observed date based on our LISM parameters. The high ram-pressure solar wind transmitted through the TS becomes a high thermal-pressure plasma in the heliosheath, acting to push the TS inward. Hence in our simulation, the position of the TS is determined not only by the steady-state pressure balance condition between the solar wind ram-pressure and the LISM pressure, but also by the highly variable dynamical ram pressure of the solar wind. The periods when the high ram-pressure solar wind pulses arrive at the TS shock seem to correspond to the period of the TS particle events observed at V-1. We plan to estimate the solar-wind deceleration between the positions of V-1 and V-2 by using V-2 magnetic data in our simulations and comparing time-correlations between the calculated magnetic field at the V-1 position with the observed V-1 magnetic field.

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