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Richardson & Smith 2003
Richardson, J.D. and Smith, C.W. (2003). The radial temperature profile of the solar wind. Geophysical Research Letters 30: doi: 10.1029/2002GL016551. issn: 0094-8276.

The Voyager data show a decrease in temperature in the inner heliosphere, an increase in temperature from 30--50 AU, a decrease from 50--63 AU, followed by another increase from 63--68 AU. Models of pickup proton heating predict a monotonic temperature rise beyond about 30 AU but do not account for the smaller scale (few AU) temperature variations. At 1 AU, the solar wind temperature is a strong function of the solar wind speed. We find that incorporating a temperature dependence on speed into the pickup proton heating results can reproduce much of the smaller-scale temperature variation observed out to 68 AU. The same speed-temperature dependence provides good fits to data from both the outer heliosphere and from near Earth. Since a large fraction of the proton energy results from heating, this work implies that the heating rate is a function of the speed.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Interplanetary Physics, Solar wind plasma, Interplanetary Physics, Interstellar gas, Interplanetary Physics, Pickup ions
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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