Comparing various multi-component global heliosphere models

Abstract

Modeling of the global heliosphere seeks to investigate the interaction of the solar wind with the partially ionized local interstellar medium. Models that treat neutral hydrogen self-consistently and in great detail, together with the plasma, but that neglect magnetic fields, constitute a sub-category within global heliospheric models. There are several different modeling strategies used for this sub-category in the literature. Differences and commonalities in the modeling results from different strategies are pointed out. Plasma-only models and fully self-consistent models from four research groups, for which the neutral species is modeled with either one, three, or four fluids, or else kinetically, are run with the same boundary parameters and equations. They are compared to each other with respect to the locations of key heliospheric boundary locations and with respect to the neutral hydrogen content throughout the heliosphere. In many respects, the models' predictions are similar. In particular, the locations of the termination shock agree to within 7% in the nose direction and to within 14% in the downwind direction. The nose locations of the heliopause agree to within 5%. The filtration of neutral hydrogen from the interstellar medium into the inner heliosphere, however, is model dependent, as are other neutral results including the hydrogen wall. These differences are closely linked to the strength of the interstellar bow shock. The comparison also underlines that it is critical to include neutral hydrogen into global heliospheric models.

10 pages, 4 figures, submitted to a special section at A&A of an ISSI team "Determination of the physical Hydrogen parameters of the LIC from within the Heliosphere"

References in corpus (4)

• The Boundary Conditions of the Heliosphere: Photoionization Models Constrained by Interstellar and In Situ Data
• Density of neutral interstellar hydrogen at the termination shock from Ulysses pickup ion observations
• Heliospheric Response to Different Possible Interstellar Environments
• Model of the tail region of the heliospheric interface

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Three-dimensional kinetic-MHD model of the global heliosphere with the heliopause-surface fitting
• The Boundary Conditions of the Heliosphere: Photoionization Models Constrained by Interstellar and In Situ Data
• Three-dimensional Features of the Outer Heliosphere Due to Coupling between the Interstellar and Heliospheric Magnetic Field. V. The Bow Wave, Heliospheric Boundary Layer, Instabilities, and Magnetic Reconnection
• Density of neutral interstellar hydrogen at the termination shock from Ulysses pickup ion observations
• Neutral H density at the termination shock: a consolidation of recent results
• Ionization rates in the heliosheath and in astrosheaths
• An exact analytical solution for the interstellar magnetic field in the vicinity of the heliosphere
• The development of a split-tail heliosphere and the role of non-ideal processes: a comparison of the BU and Moscow models
• Angular Scattering in Charge Exchange: Issues and Implications for Secondary Interstellar Hydrogen
• Helium Energetic Neutral Atoms from the Heliosphere: Perspectives for Future Observations
• Generalized multi-polytropic Rankine-Hugoniot relations and the entropy condition
• Interstellar Neutral Hydrogen in the Heliosphere: New Horizons Observations in the Context of Models
• An Improved Analytical Model of the Local Interstellar Magnetic Field: The Extension to Compressibility
• The global structure of astrospheres: effect of Knudsen number
• 4pi Models of CMEs and ICMEs
• Systematic Light Propagation Bias from the Heliosphere and Its Impact on the Hubble Tension
• Influence of the interstellar magnetic field and 11-year cycle of solar activity on the heliopause nose location