The effect of the heliospheric interface filtration on the distant Lyman-Alpha glow and the pick-up proton fluxes

Details The effect of the heliospheric interface filtration on the distant Lyman-Alpha glow and the pick-up proton fluxes The effect of the heliospheric interface filtration on the distant Lyman-Alpha glow and the pick-up proton fluxes

Jul 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993a%26a...274..612f&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 274, p. 612 (1993)

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

14

Solar Wind, Interplanetary Medium, Interstellar Medium: General

Scientific paper

The neutral component of the local interstellar medium has to pass over the plasma interface region ahead of the solar system prior to its advance towards the inner heliosphere where it is removed by ionization processes. Hereby especially interstellar hydrogen experiences intensive influences by charge exchange interactions with protons in the perturbed interface plasma flows ahead of the heliopause. These influences cause an important, fractional depletion of interstellar hydrogen and a systematic change of its velocity distribution function. Here we start from a quantitative description of these changes given by means of a Boltzmann kinetic approach by which we can obtain numerical solutions for the resulting distribution function and its velocity moments, showing the changes in density, temperature and bulk velocity of interstellar hydrogen at the advance of the gas towards the sun.
Substantial differences can be noticed between hydrogen velocity moments at the upwind and at the downwind side of the solar system, respectively. In addition, these moments are fairly sensitive to the type of plasma interface which is actually present, and thus do shed new light to up-to-date problems in the synoptic interpretation of distant heliospheric Lyman-Alpha resonance glow data.
Within a conventional modelling of the heliospheric hydrogen distribution and of the associated heliospheric Lyman- Alpha glow it appears impossible to explain VOYAGER-2- and PIONEER-10-Lyman-Alpha data on the basis of one common set of interstellar gas parameters. As we are going to show here, quantitative account of the interface effect on the heliospheric hydrogen distribution enable a satisfactory data representation based on an optically thin radiation calculation. If the appropriate interface models are selected, then nearly a quantitative fit of the upwind and downwind Lyman-Alpha intensity decreases with solar distance can be given. For these models we also display the actual pick-up proton production rates in the heliosphere and the resulting pick-up ion fluxes as function of solar distance and off-axis inclination angle.

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