Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(959), p. 4, 2023

DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad03e2

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

A Comparison of Particle-in-cell and Hybrid Simulations of the Heliospheric Termination Shock

Journal article published in 2023 by M. Swisdak ORCID, J. Giacalone ORCID, J. F. Drake ORCID, M. Opher ORCID, G. P. Zank ORCID, B. Zieger ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Abstract We compare hybrid (kinetic proton, fluid electron) and particle-in-cell (kinetic proton, kinetic electron) simulations of the solar wind termination shock with parameters similar to those observed by Voyager 2 during its crossing. The steady-state results show excellent agreement between the downstream variations in the density, plasma velocity, and magnetic field. The quasi-perpendicular shock accelerates interstellar pickup ions to a maximum energy limited by the size of the computational domain, with somewhat higher fluxes and maximal energies observed in the particle-in-cell simulation, likely due to differences in the cross-shock electric field arising from electron kinetic-scale effects. The higher fluxes may help address recent discrepancies noted between observations and large-scale hybrid simulations.