On the sensitivity of heliosphere models to the uncertainty of the low-energy charge exchange cross section

TL;DR

This paper investigates how uncertainties in low-energy charge-exchange cross sections affect heliosphere models, showing that differences in cross-section data can significantly alter model parameters and outcomes.

Contribution

It compares existing charge-exchange cross-section data and proposes a formulation that aligns better with most data, quantifying its impact on heliosphere modeling.

Findings

Differences in cross-section data can change heliosphere size estimates.

Adjusting interstellar densities compensates for cross-section uncertainties.

A new formulation reduces discrepancies in model predictions.

Abstract

Models play an important role in our understanding of the global structure of the solar wind and its interaction with the interstellar medium. A critical ingredient in many types of models are the charge-exchange collisions between ions and neutrals. Some ambiguity exists in the charge-exchange cross-section for protons and hydrogen atoms, depending on which experimental data is used. The differences are greatest at low energies, and for the plasma-neutral interaction in the outer heliosheath may exceed 50\%. In this paper we assess a number of existing data sets and formulae for proton-hydrogen charge-exchange. We use a global simulation of the heliosphere to quantify the differences between the currently favored cross-section, and a formulation we suggest that more closely matches the majority of available data. We find that in order to make the resulting two heliospheres the same size, the interstellar proton and hydrogen densities need to be adjusted by 10 to 15\%, which provides a way to link the uncertainty in the cross-section to the uncertainty in the parameters of the pristine interstellar plasma.