Investigations of the Origin of the "Inner Source" of Heliospheric Pick-up Ions

Details Investigations of the Origin of the "Inner Source" of Heliospheric Pick-up Ions Investigations of the Origin of the "Inner Source" of Heliospheric Pick-up Ions

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsh22b0753w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SH22B-0753

Physics

2129 Interplanetary Dust, 2152 Pickup Ions, 6015 Dust, 6213 Dust

Scientific paper

The recently discovered "inner source" of heliospheric pick-up ions is currently ascribed to the liberation of implanted solar wind atoms from interplanetary dust particles that are saturated with solar wind gas. Since the launch of SOHO, the LASCO instrument has observed a large number of sun-grazing comets; typically one is observed every few days. Such comets contribute a significant amount of small dust particles to the dust inventory of the inner heliosphere. Typical lifetimes against the Poynting-Robertson effect for very small ( ~ 100Å) particles are on the order of a few tens of years, resulting in significant accumulation of small particles in the innermost parts of the heliosphere. Such small particles dominate the geometrical cross section of dust but do not saturate with solar wind because it is not trapped. Typical solar wind ranges in dust (SiO2) are on the order of few 100 Å. However, the solar wind that is not trapped but transmitted through these particles looses a significant fraction of its kinetic energy and all memory of its initial charge state. The most probable charge state of the transmitted particles are neutral atoms and singly charged ions. We investigate the validity of this scenario as an alternative explanation of the inner source of pick-up ions.

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