HR: 15:13h
AN: SH43B-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Generation of Ions and Energetic Neutral Atoms from Near Solar Dust
AU: * Mann, I
EM: imann@uni-muenster.de
AF: Institut fuer Planetologie, Westfaelische Wilhelms - Universitaet, Wilhelm - Klemm - Str. 10, Muenster, 48149 Germany
AB: Dust interactions with the solar wind are assumed to generate pick-up ions and some authors even suggest dust interactions to generate energetic neutral atoms and to account for some recent findings of the element abundances of the anomalous cosmic rays. Most models, however, are limited by our lack of understanding the dust plasma interactions. The near solar dust cloud allows for directly studying a cosmic dust-plasma cloud and therein processes that also appear in other cosmic environments. The number density of dust particles that are either produced by comets and asteroids in the solar system or are entering the solar system from interstellar space increases towards the sun where small particles are strongly affected in their orbits by the solar magnetic field. Dust sublimation becomes particularly important and surface processes release dust compounds in the ambient interplanetary medium. We discuss these different processes and their variation with the solar wind conditions. Based on current knowledge of the interplanetary dust cloud we quantify the production of pick up ions and energetic neutral atoms that is connected to the dust. We finally discuss how dust-plasma interactions could be studied with future dedicated experiments from spacecraft in the inner solar system.
DE: 2124 Heliopause and solar wind termination
DE: 2129 Interplanetary dust
DE: 2152 Pickup ions
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting