The return of the bow shock

Abstract

Recently it has been discussed whether a bow shock ahead of the heliospheric stagnation region does exist or not. This discussion was triggered by measurements indicating that the Alfvén speed and that of fast magnetosonic waves are higher than the flow speed of the local interstellar medium (LISM) relative to the heliosphere and resulted in the conclusion that there might exist either a bow wave or a slow magnetosonic shock. We demonstrate here that including the He${}^{+}$ component of the LISM yields both an Alfvén and fast magnetosonic wave speed lower than the LISM flow speed. Consequently, the scenario of a bow shock in front of the heliosphere as modelled in numerous simulations of the interaction of the solar wind with the LISM remains valid.

6 pages, 4 figures, accepted, 12-01-2013. ApJ, 2013

References in corpus (5)

• 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
• The Fractional Ionization of the Warm Neutral Interstellar Medium
• Ionization rates in the heliosheath and in astrosheaths
• The existence and nature of the interstellar bow shock

Cited by in corpus (16)

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• Coronal Properties of the Seyfert 1.9 Galaxy MCG -05-23-016 Determined from Hard X-ray Spectroscopy with NuSTAR
• Ionization rates in the heliosheath and in astrosheaths
• The Geometry of the Infrared and X-ray Obscurer in a Dusty Hyperluminous Quasar
• An exact analytical solution for the interstellar magnetic field in the vicinity of the heliosphere
• Shock structures of astrospheres
• Skymaps of observables of three-dimensional MHD astrosphere models
• Properties of the Interstellar Medium along Sight Lines to Nearby Planet Hosting Stars
• Detection of the high energy cut-off from the Seyfert 1.5 galaxy NGC 5273
• True versus apparent shapes of bow shocks
• An Improved Analytical Model of the Local Interstellar Magnetic Field: The Extension to Compressibility
• Interstellar Bow Shocks around Fast Stars Passing through the Local Interstellar Medium
• An empirical model of Energetic Neutral Atom imaging of the heliosphere and its implications for future heliospheric missions at great heliocentric distances
• MHD flows at astropauses and in astrotails
• Transient Heliosheath Modulation