Shape of the heliospheric termination shock: Effects of latitude variations of solar wind dynamic pressure

Abstract

We investigate the consequences of internal solar wind latitude variations on the heliospheric termination shock and the flow of the gas beyond the shock. We have developed a simple gasdynamic model, assuming the solar wind to be a steady, axially symmetric radial outflow of gas that passes through a termination shock and flows incompressibly beyond the shock. We ignore any latitude variations external to the heliosphere (i.e., due to the local interstellar medium) by requiring that the stagnation pressure infinitely far away must be spherically symmetric. Analysis of the model leads to three broad conclusions: (1) The shape of the heliospheric shock is qualitatively similar to what one would predict using the “naive” assumption that the heliocentric distance of the shock is proportional to the square root of the scaled solar wind dynamic pressure ρvr2. (2) However, the existence of an internal latitude dependence of the scaled dynamic pressure requires that the shock must be oblique at some latitudes, and this obliquity produces an outward “bulge” in the shape of the termination shock; this conclusion is completely general, and in particular is true for the case of an oblate shock. (3) For a prolate termination shock the far‐down‐stream flow is deflected toward the equator, and solar wind originating in the poleward half of (say) the northern hemisphere would fill more than half of the volume of the same hemisphere beyond the termination shock; the deflection would be in the opposite sense (poleward) for an oblate termination shock.