Abstract
Solar wind ion composition measurements are a unique tool to investigate solar system processes, ranging from the solar interior out to the heliospheric boundary. Compositional changes in the solar wind, which originates in the outer convective zone (OCZ) of the Sun, are produced in the transport of solar matter from the OCZ to the solar corona and in the process of lifting the coronal plasma out of the solar gravitational field up to the termination shock and beyond. During the last three years instrumentation originally designed to measure the composition of the solar wind has detected further pick-up ion species in the solar wind and thereby strongly motivated pick-up ion related research. This review therefore puts particular emphasis on pick-up ion observations and their theoretical interpretation.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)