Solar wind turbulent heating by interstellar pickup protons: 2-component model

Abstract

We apply a recently developed 2-component phenomenology to the turbulent heating of the core solar wind protons as seen at the Voyager 2 spacecraft. We find that this new description improves the model predictions of core temperature and correlation scale of the fluctuations, yielding excellent agreement with the Voyager measurements. However, the model fluctuation intensity substantially exceeds the Voyager measurements in the outer heliosphere, indicating that this picture needs further refinement.