The Pitch-angle Distributions of Suprathermal Ions near an Interplanetary Shock

Abstract

Abstract We present a case study of the pitch-angle distributions (PADs) of suprathermal H+, He2+ at ∼10–40 keV/nuc and He+ at ∼8–20 keV/nuc near a reverse shock of a stream interaction region observed by the Plasma and Suprathermal Ion Composition instrument on board the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Ahead spacecraft on 2008 March 9. We find that in both the downstream and upstream region close to the shock, the shocked particles of all three species appear to have a power-law-like spectrum at these suprathermal energies. The PADs of these three species show very similar behavior: in the downstream region, the phase space density appears to be significantly higher in the direction perpendicular to the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) than in the parallel direction, along which particles accelerated at the shock front are supposed to escape into the downstream region. In the upstream region, the PADs of all three species show a clear beam in the direction antiparallel to the IMF due to the escaping particles from the shock into the upstream region. In addition, we find that suprathermal He+ shows a signature of bidirectional beams in the upstream region very close to the shock. These results suggest that H+, He2+ at ∼10–40 keV/nuc and He+ at ∼8–20 keV/nuc could be accelerated similarly at interplanetary shocks and that shock drift acceleration likely plays an important role in the in situ acceleration of low-energy suprathermal ions.