Turbulent Heating of the Distant Solar Wind by Interstellar Pickup Protons with a Variable Solar Wind Speed

Details Turbulent Heating of the Distant Solar Wind by Interstellar Pickup Protons with a Variable Solar Wind Speed Turbulent Heating of the Distant Solar Wind by Interstellar Pickup Protons with a Variable Solar Wind Speed

May 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agusmsh23a..04i&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2005, abstract #SH23A-04

Mathematics

Logic

2144 Interstellar Gas, 2149 Mhd Waves And Turbulence, 2152 Pickup Ions, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 7863 Turbulence

Scientific paper

We have been investigating the turbulent heating of the equatorial solar wind, as modeled by a phenomenological description of the turbulent evolution under the action of spherical expansion, shear driving in the inner heliosphere, and interstellar pickup proton driving in the outer heliosphere. This model is able to reproduce the radial trend of solar wind temperature observed at the Voyager 2 spacecraft out to nearly 80 AU. However, a detailed comparison with the observed solar-rotation-averaged temperature, which shows considerable spatial/temporal variation, is less than satisfactory. In particular, the solar wind temperature beyond 55 AU, measured during the most recent solar maximum period, is found to be consistently lower than predicted by our model and the variations of the observed and model temperatures are not well matched in phase. These differences may indicate the need for modifications in the turbulent evolution model, which presently contains a number of simplifications. However, the present model does not include several important physical effects, which should be treated before considering the effect of more complicated turbulence models. In particular, the well-defined slowdown of the solar wind due to the momentum loading by the pickup protons has not been incorporated. Neither has the dependence of the charge-exchange cross-section on solar wind flux been taken into account. Both of these effects are expected to reduce the predicted model temperature in the distant solar wind. We will extend the turbulent evolution model to allow these effects in the theory, and determine whether they result in significant improvement in the comparison with the Voyager observations.

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