In Situ Observations of Interstellar Pickup Ions from 1 au to the Outer Heliosphere
McComas, D. J.; Möbius, E.; Pogorelov, N. V.; Zhang, M.; Elliott, H. A.; Swaczyna, P.; Bower, J.; Zirnstein, E. J.
United States
Abstract
Interstellar pickup ions are an ubiquitous and thermodynamically important component of the solar wind plasma in the heliosphere. These PUIs are born from the ionization of the interstellar neutral gas, consisting of hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of heavier elements, in the solar wind as the heliosphere moves through the local interstellar medium. As cold interstellar neutral atoms become ionized, they form an energetic ring beam distribution comoving with the solar wind. Subsequent scattering in pitch angle by intrinsic and self-generated turbulence and their advection with the radially expanding solar wind leads to the formation of a filled-shell PUI distribution, whose density and pressure relative to the thermal solar wind ions grows with distance from the Sun.