Signatures of the Interplanetary Helium Cone Reflected by Pick-up Ions

Abstract

As known for a long time, interstellar wind neutral helium atoms deeply penetrate into the inner heliosphere and, when passing through the solar gravity field, form a strongly pronounced helium density cone in the downwind direction. Helium atoms are photoionized and picked-up by the solar wind magnetic field, but as pick-up ions they are not simply convected outwards with the solar wind in radial directions as assumed in earlier publications. Rather they undergo a complicated diffusion-convection process described here by an appropriate kinetic transport equation taking into account adiabatic cooling and focusing, pitch angle scattering and energy diffusion. In this paper, we solve this equation for He+pick-up ions which are injected into the solar wind mainly in the region of the helium cone. We show the resulting He+pick-up ion density profile along the orbit of the Earth in many respects differs from the density profile of the neutral helium cone: depending on solar-wind-entrained Alfvenic turbulence levels, the density maximum when looking from the Earth to the Sun is shifted towards the right side of the cone, the ratio of peak-densities to wing-densities varies and a left-to-right asymmetry of the He+-density profile is pronounced. Derivation of interstellar helium parameters from these He+-structures, such as the local interstellar medium (LISM) wind direction, LISM velocity and LISM temperature, are very much impeded. In addition, the pitch-angle spectrum of He+pick-up ions systematically becomes more anisotropic when passing from the left to the right wing of the cone structure. All effects mentioned are more strongly pronounced in high velocity solar wind compared to the low velocity solar wind.