Velocity space diffusion of pickup ions from the water group at comet Halley

Abstract

We have studied the diffusion in velocity space of cometary ions using the distributions of ions measured by the implanted ion spectrometer on Giotto during the inbound pass. The measurements were transformed into a frame comoving with the solar wind and oriented with the magnetic field. The observations show the evolution of the pitch angle distribution in the solar wind turbulence to form a shell from the initial ring. Diffusion in energy takes place simultaneously but on a longer time scale. Comparison with theory is inhibited by the lack of a suitable spatial model, but the simple arguments we can make indicate that pitch angle diffusion, and the process of parallel pickup, take place more slowly than theory suggests.