Energetic pickup proton population downstream of the termination shock as revealed by IBEX-Hi data

Abstract

ABSTRACT Pickup protons originate as a result of the ionization of hydrogen atoms in the supersonic solar wind, forming the suprathermal component of protons in the heliosphere. While they are being picked by the heliospheric magnetic field and convected into the heliosheath, the pickup protons may suffer stochastic acceleration from the solar wind turbulence in the region from the Sun up to the heliospheric termination shock, where they can also experience shock-drift acceleration or reflection from the cross-shock potential. These processes create a high-energy tail in the pickup ion energy distribution. The properties of this energetic pickup proton population are still not well defined, in spite of the fact that they are vital for models that simulate energetic neutral atom fluxes. We consider two scenarios for the pickup proton velocity distribution downstream of the heliospheric termination shock (a filled shell with an energetic power-law tail, and bi-Maxwellian). Based on a numerical kinetic model and observations of the energetic neutral atom fluxes from the inner heliosheath by the IBEX-Hi instrument, we characterize the pickup proton distribution and provide estimations of the properties of the energetic pickup proton population downstream of the termination shock.