Jena 2013 – scientific programme

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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 11: Sonne und Heliosphäre III

EP 11.6: Talk

Friday, March 1, 2013, 12:45–13:00, HS 9

The role of electrons at the solar wind termination shock — Hans Joerg Fahr and •Mark Siewert — Argelander Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn

Describing the solar wind termination shock as a multi-fluid MHD Rankine-Hugoniot shock structure, it is usually assumed that electrons and protons experience identical jumps in density and pressure at the plasma passage over the shock. When analysing the specific kinetic conditions for electrons and ions at this MHD shock crossing, we find that electrons react very much different from protons at their shock passage undergoing an over-adiabatic heating due to conversion of electrically induced overshoot energies into downstream thermal energies. In case of an electron-proton two-fluid plasma , electrons constitute the dominant contribution to the downstream thermal plasma pressure and thereby determine the resulting compression ratio at the shock. We show that taking this over-adiabatic electron heating into account will then deliver a correct representation of all shock data taken with VOYAGER-2.