Effects of shock-drift acceleration at the termination shock and electron thermal conductivity on the global structure of the heliospheric interface

Abstract:

Analyses of Voyager 1 data has shown (Stone et al., 2013, Gurnett et al., 2013) that Voyager
1 crossed the heliopause in August 2012 at 122 AU. This distance is signicantly less than
it was expected from the global kinetic-MHD models of the solar wind interaction with the
local interstellar medium. In the presentation we will review possible physical mechanisms
that may lead to reduce size of the inner heliosheath. In particular, we consider the effects
of 1) electron thermal conductivity and 2) shock-drift acceleration of pickup protons at termination shock.

We will show results of our numerical models of the heliospheric interface where
the effects are taken into account. It will be shown that the heliocentric distances to the heliopause is
signicantly smaller and the distance to the heliospheric termination shock is larger as compared
to the models where the effects are not included. Other implications of these effects to observations will be discussed as well.