The Local Interstellar Magnetic Field Determined from the IBEX Ribbon

Abstract:

As the solar wind plasma flows away from the Sun, it eventually collides with the local interstellar medium, creating the heliosphere. Neutral atoms from interstellar space travel inside the heliosphere and charge-exchange with the solar wind plasma, creating energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). Some of these ENAs travel outside the heliosphere, undergo two charge-exchange events, and travel back inside the heliosphere towards Earth, with the strongest intensity in directions perpendicular to the interstellar magnetic field (IMF). It is widely believed that this process generates the “ribbon” of enhanced ENA intensity observed by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), and has been shown to explain many key features of the observations.

IBEX observations of the ribbon are composed of a complex, line-of-sight integration of ENAs that come from different distances beyond the heliopause, and thus the ENAs detected by IBEX over a wide range of energies are uniquely coupled to the IMF draped around the heliosphere. We present a detailed analysis of the IBEX ribbon measurements using 3D simulations of the heliosphere and computations of the ribbon flux at Earth based on IBEX capabilities, and derive the magnitude and direction of the IMF required to reproduce the position of the IBEX ribbon in the sky. These results have potentially large implications for our understanding of the solar-interstellar environment.