Toward interpreting the IBEX ribbon with mirror diffusion in interstellar turbulent magnetic fields

TL;DR

This paper explores how mirror diffusion in interstellar MHD turbulence explains the IBEX ribbon's formation, width, and coherence, linking turbulence properties to energetic neutral atom observations.

Contribution

It introduces a new mirror diffusion mechanism for particles in MHD turbulence that explains the IBEX ribbon features and constrains the turbulence amplitude and injection scale.

Findings

Mirror diffusion confines pickup ions and preserves pitch angles.

Ribbon width depends on pitch angle range and field line wandering.

Injection scale of turbulence is less than ~500 au for coherence.

Abstract

We investigate the role of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence measured by Voyager in the very local interstellar medium (VLISM) in modeling the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) ribbon. We demonstrate that the mirroring by compressible modes of MHD turbulence dominates over that by the mean magnetic field. Based on the new mirror diffusion mechanism identified by Lazarian and Xu for particles with large pitch angles in MHD turbulence, we find that the mirror diffusion can both confine pickup ions and preserve their initial pitch angles, and thus accounts for the enhanced intensity of energetic neutral atoms that return to the heliosphere. The ribbon width is determined by both the range of pitch angles for effective turbulent mirroring and the field line wandering induced by Alfv\'{e}nic modes. It in turn provides a constraint on the amplitude of magnetic fluctuations of fast modes. The field line wandering also affects the coherence of the ribbon structure across the sky. By extrapolating the magnetic energy spectrum measured by Voyager, we find that the injection scale of the turbulence in the VLISM is less than $\sim 500$ au for the ribbon structure to be coherent.