Interstellar turbulence in the presence of kinetic neutral atoms

Abstract

The local interstellar medium (LISM) is a relatively cool partially ionized plasma, where neutral hydrogen atoms out‐number plasma protons by about 3:1. Neutral hydrogen plays an important role in determining the structure of the heliosphere, which is created by the interaction of solar wind plasma with LISM plasma. A key feature of neutral atoms is that their mean free paths are large, compared to the length scale of the heliosphere, and their main form of interaction is through charge‐exchange with the plasma. For this reason it is generally accepted that heliospheric neutral atoms should be modeled kinetically, rather than as a fluid. In this paper we present preliminary results of a coupling between a kinetic neutral atom code and a 2D compressible MHD spectral code to investigate interstellar medium turbulence in the presence of kinetic neutral atoms.