Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 719, Issue 2, Pages 1097-1103Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/719/2/1097
Keywords
ISM: kinematics and dynamics; instabilities; solar wind; turbulence
Categories
Funding
- NASA [NNX10AE46G, NNX09AG63G]
- NSF [AGS-0955700]
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [0955700] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- NASA [134850, NNX09AG63G, 118356, NNX10AE46G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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First results from NASA's Interplanetary Boundary Explorer mission showed an unexpected ribbon of enhanced energetic neutral atom (ENA) flux spanning most of the sky. One explanation put forward suggests that the ribbon may be produced by secondary ENAs originating from pickup ions (PUIs) in the outer heliosheath (OHS). These PUIs are generated when primary ENAs born in the solar wind and inner heliosheath cross the heliopause and charge exchange in the nearby interstellar medium. One of the core assumptions underpinning this theory is that the newly born PUI ring is relatively stable with respect to wave generation, so that it can undergo charge exchange before becoming isotropized. We test this assumption using a linear kinetic theory and hybrid simulations of a low-density PUI ring interacting with instability-generated waves in a warm plasma of the OHS. It is shown that a broadband spectrum of waves is excited as a result of the cyclotron instability that efficiently scatters the ring ions. We also show that the ambient fluctuations in the OHS are unlikely to produce a measurable degree of resonant scattering of PUIs because their intensity is too low compared with the waves excited by the instability.
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