Fluid Modeling of the VLISM/Solar Wind Interaction With the 13-Moment Formalism

Details Fluid Modeling of the VLISM/Solar Wind Interaction With the 13-Moment Formalism Fluid Modeling of the VLISM/Solar Wind Interaction With the 13-Moment Formalism

Sep 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aipc..679..194m&link_type=abstract

SOLAR WIND TEN: Proceedings of the Tenth International Solar Wind Conference. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 679, pp. 194-1

Statistics

Computation

1

Particle Emission, Solar Wind, Interplanetary Magnetic Fields, Solar Wind Plasma, Sources Of Solar Wind

Scientific paper

The interaction of the solar wind with the Very Local Interstellar Medium is mediated largely by collisional charge exchange of interstellar neutral atomic hydrogen and protons in the heliosheath. This interaction provides an additional momentum to the interstellar population over that due to the charged population alone that leads to a decrease in the expected size of the heliospheric cavity. The interaction is complicated by time variations in the internal solar wind flow, the presence of both the interstellar and interplanetary magnetic fields, and the large mean free paths for charge exchange. Proper treatment of the problem calls for a fully six-dimensional, time-dependent kinetic interaction model, yet computational complexities inherent in such a model have precluded its full implementation. Although the applicability of fluid models to this problem has been questioned, one can expect them to provide fairly good estimates of the various boundary locations provided that all salient moments are included. While the ion population can be approximated to first order by a convected Maxwellian, given the relatively small ion gyroradii, the neutral population acquires significant non-Maxwellian features due to the large mean free paths for collisions. In this case the lowest-order moment description is the thirteen-moment description of Grad. The thirteen quantities are the density, temperature, velocity vector, heat flux vector, and five deviator components of the pressure tensor. Unlike the case of the Navier-Stokes equations, there is no a priori assumption about collisions; the only assumption is how the hierarchy of fluid equations is to be truncated. To connect the neutral and ion components, moments of the Boltzmann collision operator must be evaluated for representative distribution functions that give rise to such moments, using the appropriate collision cross section. New results are reported for the collision operator moments corresponding to the full set of pressure-tensor components and the heat flux vector components. All of these can be expressed in closed form in terms of sums of confluent hypergeometric functions of the first kind (Kummer's function). This derivation completes the formalism required for the implementation of a time-dependent, magnetized fluid model of the interaction using the thirteen-moment formalism to describe the neutral component.

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