Work

Hybrid Simulations of Interstellar Pickup Ions at the Solar Wind Termination Shock Revisited

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: We revisit previous hybrid simulations of the heating and acceleration of interstellar pickup ions (PUIs) at the solar wind termination shock. In previous simulations, a relatively cold initial distribution of PUIs was assumed; and while the resulting shock-heated distribution was consistent with Voyager 2 LECP measurements at about 30 keV, the intensity of the distribution downstream of the shock in the ~1–10 keV energy range was lower than predictions based on analysis of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer-Hi and Cassini's Ion and Neutral Camera. Here we perform new simulations with more realistic initial PUI distributions. We assume the distribution is a partially filled spherical shell in velocity space with a radius that varies from 320 to 640 km s −1 . We then use the distributions downstream of the shock from these new simulations to estimate the ENA flux spectrum and compare with observations. We find that the predicted ENA spectrum from the new simulations much better matches the observations over a broad range of energies. We conclude that the hybrid simulations provide reasonable predictions for the distribution of charged particles in the energy range from ~0.5 to 50 keV.

Source: The Astrophysical Journal

DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ada89c