Impact of pickup ions on the shock front nonstationarity and energy dissipation of the heliospheric termination shock: Two-dimensional full particle simulations and comparison with Voyager 2 observations

TL;DR

This study uses 2-D particle-in-cell simulations and Voyager 2 data to analyze how pickup ions influence the nonstationarity and energy dissipation at the heliospheric termination shock, revealing key roles of PUIs in shock dynamics.

Contribution

The paper presents the first self-consistent 2-D PIC simulations of the termination shock including pickup ions and compares results with Voyager 2 observations, highlighting PUI effects.

Findings

Shock front ripples cause nonstationarity.

Pickup ions dominate energy dissipation.

Simulated ion distribution matches Voyager 2 data.

Abstract

The transition between the supersonic solar wind and the subsonic heliosheath, the termination shock (TS), was observed by Voyager 2 (V2) on 2007 August 31-September 1 at a distance of 84 AU from the Sun. The data reveal multiple crossings of a complex, quasi-perpendicular supercritical shock. These experimental data are the starting point for a more sophisticated analysis that includes computer modeling of a shock in the presence of pickup ions (PUIs). here, we present two-dimensional (2-D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of the TS including PUIs self-consistently. We also report the ion velocity distribution across the TS using the Faraday cup data from V2. A relatively complete plasma and magnetic field data set from V2 gives us the opportunity to do a full comparison between the experimental data and PIC simulation results. Our results show that: (1) The nonstationarity of the shock front is mainly caused by the ripples along the shock front and these ripples from even if the percentage of PUIs is high. (2) PUIs play a key role in the energy dissipation of the TS, and most of the incident ion dynamic energy is transferred to the thermal energy of PUIs instead of solar wind ions (SWIs). (3) The simulated composite heliosheath ion velocity distribution function is a superposition of a cold core formed by transmitted SWIs, the shoulders contributed by the hot reflected SWIs and directly transmitted PUIs, and the wings of the distribution dominated by the very hot reflected PUIs. (4) The V2 Faraday cups observed the cool core of the distribution, so they saw only a tip of the iceberg. For the evolution of the cool core distribution function across the TS, the computed results agree reasonably well with the V2experimental results.