The energy spectrum of heliospheric ENAs and properties of their parent protons

Details The energy spectrum of heliospheric ENAs and properties of their parent protons The energy spectrum of heliospheric ENAs and properties of their parent protons

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsh21a1809p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SH21A-1809

Physics

Plasma Physics

[7800] Space Plasma Physics, [7846] Space Plasma Physics / Plasma Energization

Scientific paper

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) observed strong power-law spectra from 0.2-6 keV in its all-sky heliospheric energetic neutral atom (ENA) maps. We explore the origin of these power laws and derive properties of the outer heliosphere from them. As ENAs undergo non-negligible transmission effects from the outer boundaries of the solar system to IBEX’s orbit around earth, a transmission model is necessary to analyze the spectra. We compare the results from several transmission models and provide all-sky power-law index maps at the outer boundary. The ENA energy spectra closely follows a power law, but hybrid kinetic/fluid simulations by Wu et al. found the plasma downstream of the termination shock is best characterized by two Maxwellians, one for the core ions of the solar wind and the other for pick-up ions. We show a line-of-sight integration of Maxwellians with an observationally motivated distribution of states can lead to suprathermal distributions much like what is observed by IBEX. Thus we provide an important connection between the IBEX power law and the theoretical double Maxwellian distribution of the ions. Using this connection we derive the properties of the ~0.2-6 keV heliosheath plasma in the direction of Voyager 2 and show these properties are consistent with the Voyager 2 observations. Finally, using Voyager 2 as a reference point, we provide an all-sky map of relative termination shock strength.

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