Charge Exchange Driven Instability of the Heliopause

Details Charge Exchange Driven Instability of the Heliopause Charge Exchange Driven Instability of the Heliopause

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsh11b1925a&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SH11B-1925

Physics

[2124] Interplanetary Physics / Heliopause And Solar Wind Termination, [2126] Interplanetary Physics / Heliosphere/Interstellar Medium Interactions, [2151] Interplanetary Physics / Neutral Particles, [2152] Interplanetary Physics / Pickup Ions

Scientific paper

Results from a number of time dependent hydromagnetic simulations of the global heliopause have shown that the friction between interstellar neutral and plasma ions, mediated by change exchange collisions, may cause the heliopause to be potentially unstable to large scale modes. The charge exchange interaction is proportional to the plasma density and introduces an effective gravity in the direction of the neutral flow. Since interstellar plasma is much denser than the heliosheath plasma, Rayleigh-Taylor like modes are driven unstable at the stagnation point close to the nose of the heliopause. Based on the simulation of Pauls et al [1], Khabibrakhmanov et al [2] have given a simple model of the equilibrium of heliopause plasma flow along the stagnation line. Here we analyze the stability of the plasma flows at the stagnation point where the plasma flow velocity approaches zero but the spatial gradients of flow velocity diverge. We show that modes propagating parallel to the surface of tangential discontinuity are unstable for realistic heliosheath parameters. The dependence of the growth rate on various heliosheath parameters is studied. In the second part of our work we study the effect of hot heliosheath neutrals which flow in the direction opposite to that of interstellar neutrals) on the stability of stagnation point. We show that because of the weakening of the effective gravity, these neutral have a stabilizing effect on the instability of the stagnation point. [1] H. I. Pauls, G. P. Zank and L. L. Williams, J. Geophys. Res, 100, 21595 (1995). [2] I. K. Khabibrakhmanov, D. Summers, G. P. Zank, and H. L. Pauls, J. Geophys. Res., 101, 20003 (1996).

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