The behavior of electrons at the heliospheric shock transition

Abstract

The jump of the temperature of thermal protons and the compression at the solar wind termination shock, measured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during its crossing of the shock, can be explained if one assumes that the downstream temperature of electrons essentially higher than that of the thermal protons. The upstream temperature of the electrons has little effect on this result. For instance, a tenfold increase in the upstream electron temperature relative to the thermal proton temperature results in the temperature jump change by only 10% and the compression change by 1%. Within the framework of the considered model, changing the relative content of pickup protons over a wide range does not affect the temperature jump and compression at the termination shock.