Physics
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agusmsh51a..03h&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2007, abstract #SH51A-03
Physics
2126 Heliosphere/Interstellar Medium Interactions, 2151 Neutral Particles (7837), 2152 Pickup Ions, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma
Scientific paper
The three dimensional structure of the heliosphere, bounded by the heliopause which separates hot post termination shock solar wind from interstellar plasma, is poorly known. The crossing of the heliospheric termination shock by Voyager 1, in late 2005, has yielded valuable in-situ measurements, but does not help us much in determining the 3D structure of this interface. IBEX, due for launch in 2008, will provide all-sky images of energetic neutral atoms (ENA's), generated from charge-exchange encounters between interstellar neutral atoms and heliosheath plasma protons, observed from a highly eccentric Earth orbit. These skymaps will provide line of sight integrals of the heliosheath in all directions, and will require careful interpretation to deconvolve the 2D skymaps into 3D structure. We have previously investigated ENA fluxes at 1 AU using our self-consistently coupled 3D MHD-neutral models of the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. These synthetic skymaps were generated based on the assumption of a Maxwellian velocity distribution of plasma protons. Observations suggest, however, that the solar wind plasma may be better described using a Kappa distribution, which allows for high energy tails due to pick-up ions. In the preliminary results presented here, we have used several heliospheric configurations obtained from simulations which assume regular Maxwellian fluids, then we have constructed skymaps assuming a Kappa distribution in the heliosheath.
Florinski Vladimir
Heerikhuisen Jacob
Le Roux Jakobus
Pogorelov Nikolai
Zank Gary P.
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