Two years of neutral measurements by IBEX-Lo have yielded several direct observations of interstellar neutral helium and oxygen during preferred viewing seasons. Besides the interstellar signal, there are indications of the presence of secondary neutral helium and oxygen created in the heliosphere. Detailed modeling of these particle species is necessary to connect the measured fluxes to the pristine local interstellar medium while accounting for loss and production of neutral particles during their path through the heliosphere. In this contribution, global heliosphere models are coupled to analytic calculations of neutral trajectories to obtain detailed estimates of the neutral distribution function of primary interstellar helium atoms in the heliosphere, in particular in the inner heliosphere.
@article{arxiv.1205.0967,
title = {Primary neutral helium in the heliosphere},
author = {Hans-Reinhard Mueller and Jill H. Cohen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.0967},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
To appear in proceedings of the 10th Annual International Astrophysics Conference, March 13-18, 2011, Maui; reference: Physics of the Heliosphere: A 10-year Retrospective, J. Heerikhuisen and G. Li (Eds.), AIP Conference Proceedings 1436