Interstellar Pickup Ion Production in the Global Heliosphere and Heliosheath

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive 3D model of interstellar pickup ions in the heliosphere, analyzing their spatial variation, transformation at the termination shock, and comparison with spacecraft observations, revealing key features of PUI spectra.

Contribution

It introduces a combined MHD-kinetic model of PUIs that accounts for their distribution and acceleration processes throughout the heliosphere and LISM, aligning well with observational data.

Findings

Model reproduces observed PUI spectral features.

PUI velocity distribution shows cutoff at solar wind speed.

Power-law tail with index -5 in PUI VDF is confirmed.

Abstract

Interstellar Pickup ions (PUIs) play a significant part in mediating the solar wind (SW) interaction with the interstellar medium. In this paper, we examine the details of spatial variation of the PUI velocity distribution function (VDF) in the SW by solving the PUI transport equation. We assume the PUI distribution is isotropic resulting from strong pitch-angle scattering by wave-particle interaction. A three-dimensional model combining the MHD treatment of the background SW and neutrals with a kinetic treatment of PUIs throughout the heliosphere and the surrounding local interstellar medium (LISM) has been developed. The model generates PUI power law tails via second-order Fermi process. We analyze how PUIs transform across the heliospheric termination shock (TS) and obtain the PUI phase space distribution in the inner heliosheath including continuing velocity diffusion. Our simulated PUI spectra are compared with observations made by New Horizons, Ulysses, Voyager 1, 2 and Cassini, and a satisfactory agreement is demonstrated. Some specific features in the observations, for example, a cutoff of PUI VDF at $v = V_{SW}$ and a $f \propto v^{-5}$ tail in the reference frame of the SW, are well represented by the model.