Impact of pickup ions on the shock front nonstationarity and energy dissipation of the heliospheric termination shock: Two-dimensional full particle simulations and comparison with Voyager 2 observations

Abstract

The transition between the supersonic solar wind and the subsonic heliosheath, the termination shock (TS), was observed by Voyager 2 (V2) on 2007 August 31-September 1 at a distance of 84 AU from the Sun. The data reveal multiple crossings of a complex, quasi-perpendicular supercritical shock. These experimental data are the starting point for a more sophisticated analysis that includes computer modeling of a shock in the presence of pickup ions (PUIs). here, we present two-dimensional (2-D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of the TS including PUIs self-consistently. We also report the ion velocity distribution across the TS using the Faraday cup data from V2. A relatively complete plasma and magnetic field data set from V2 gives us the opportunity to do a full comparison between the experimental data and PIC simulation results. Our results show that: (1) The nonstationarity of the shock front is mainly caused by the ripples along the shock front and these ripples from even if the percentage of PUIs is high. (2) PUIs play a key role in the energy dissipation of the TS, and most of the incident ion dynamic energy is transferred to the thermal energy of PUIs instead of solar wind ions (SWIs). (3) The simulated composite heliosheath ion velocity distribution function is a superposition of a cold core formed by transmitted SWIs, the shoulders contributed by the hot reflected SWIs and directly transmitted PUIs, and the wings of the distribution dominated by the very hot reflected PUIs. (4) The V2 Faraday cups observed the cool core of the distribution, so they saw only a tip of the iceberg. For the evolution of the cool core distribution function across the TS, the computed results agree reasonably well with the V2experimental results.

The paper has been accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• Particle acceleration in relativistic collisionless shocks: Fermi process at last?
• Simulations of Ion Acceleration at Non-relativistic Shocks. I. Acceleration Efficiency
• The effects of a kappa-distribution in the heliosheath on the global heliosphere and ENA flux at 1 AU
• Contributions to the cross shock electric field at supercritical perpendicular shocks: Impact of the pickup ions

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Thermodynamics of the inner heliosheath
• Variable Stars Observed in the Galactic Disk by AST3-1 from Dome A, Antarctica
• Stellar Variability and Flare Rates from Dome A, Antarctica using 2009 and 2010 CSTAR Observations
• Stellar Flares in the CSTAR Field: Results from the 2008 Data Set
• PIC simulation of a shock tube: Implications for wave transmission in the heliospheric boundary region
• On general correlation between 3D solar wind speed and density model and solar proxies
• Proton heating by pick-up ion driven cyclotron waves in the outer heliosphere: Hybrid expanding box simulations
• Injection process of pickup ion acceleration at an oblique heliospheric termination shock