4.2 Article

Breathing of heliospheric structures triggered by the solar-cycle activity

Journal

ANNALES GEOPHYSICAE
Volume 21, Issue 6, Pages 1303-1313

Publisher

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH
DOI: 10.5194/angeo-21-1303-2003

Keywords

interplanetary physics; heliopause and solar wind termination; general or miscellaneous; space plasma physics; experimental and mathematical techniques

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Solar wind ram pressure variations occuring within the solar activity cycle are communicated to the outer heliosphere as complicated time-variabilities, but repeating its typical form with the activity period of about 11 years. At outer heliospheric regions, the main surviving solar cycle feature is a periodic variation of the solar wind dya; L namical pressure or momentum flow, as clearly recognized by observations of the VOYAGER-1/2 space probes. This lonol-periodic variation of the solar wind dynamical pressure is modeled here through application of appropriately time-dependent inner boundary conditions within our multifluid code to describe the solar wind - interstellar medium interaction. As we can show, it takes several solar cycles until the heliospheric structures adapt to an average location about which they carry out a periodic breathing, however, lagged in phase with respect to the solar cycle. The dynamically active heliosphere behaves differently from a static heliosphere and especially shows a historic hysteresis in the sense that the shock structures move out to larger distances than explained by the average ram pressure. Obviously, additional energies are pumped into the heliosheath by means of density and pressure waves which are excited. These waves travel outwards through the interface from the termination shock towards the bow shock. Depending on longitude, the heliospheric sheath region memorizes 2-3 (upwind) and up to 67 (downwind) preceding solar activity cycles, i.e. the cycle-induced waves need corresponding travel times for the passage over the heliosheath. Within our multifluid code we also adequately describe the solar cycle variations in the energy distributions of anomalous and galactic cosmic rays, respectively According to these results the distribution of these high energetic species cannot be correctly described on the basis of the actually prevailing solar wind conditions.

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