A Model of the Heliosphere with Jets

Abstract:

The conventional picture of the heliosphere is that of a comet-shaped structure with an extended tail produced by the relative motion of the sun through the local interstellar medium (LISM). On the other hand, the measurements of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) by IBEX and CASSINI produced some surprises. The CASSINI ENA fluxes from the direction of the nose and the tail were comparable, leading the CASSINI observers to conclude that the heliosphere was ``tailless''. The IBEX observations from the tail revealed that the hardest spectrum of ENAs were localized in two lobes at high latitude while the softest spectra were at low latitudes. Recent MHD simulations of the global heliosphere have revealed that the heliosphere drives magnetized jets to the north and south similar to those driven by the Crab Nebula and other astrophysical objects [1]. That the sun's magnetic field can drive such jets when the magnetic pressure in the outer heliosphere is small compared with the local plasma pressure (β=8∏ P/B² >> 1) is a major surprise. An analytic model of the heliosheath (HS) between the termination shock (TS) and the heliopause (HP) is developed in the limit in which the interstellar flow and magnetic field are neglected [2]. The heliosphere in this limit is axisymmetric. The overall structure of the HS and HP are controlled by the solar magnetic field even in the limit of very high β because the large pressure in the HS is to lowest order balanced by the pressure of the LISM. The tension of the solar magnetic field produces a drop in the total pressure between the TS and the HP. This same pressure drop accelerates the plasma flow downstream of the TS into the north and south directions to form two collimated jets. The radii of these jets are controlled by the flow through the TS and the acceleration of this flow by the magnetic field -- a stronger solar magnetic field boosts the velocity of the jets and reduces the radii of the jets and the HP. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the global helioshere embedded in a stationary interstellar medium match well with the analytic model. The possbility of testing the jet model of the heliosphere using energetic neutral atoms from the outer heliosphere from IBEX and CASSINI is discussed.

[1] Opher et al ApJ Lett. 800, L28, 2015.
[2] Drake et al ApJ Lett., in press, 2015.