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895W

The Astrophysical Journal, 205:895-899, 1976 May 1

© 1976. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

SUN AND COMETS AS SOURCES IN AN EXTERNAL FLOW

Max K. Wallis
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, England
AND
Murray Dryer
Space Environment Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado
Received 1975 April 28; revised 1975 August 7

ABSTRACT
The interaction of the largely neutral interstellar gas with the heliosphere, on the one hand, and
the interaction of the ionized solar wind with largely neutral cometary comas, on the other, have
a number of phenomenological similarities. Both the Sun and comets act as sources embedded
within an external flow. This communication is an attempt to organize the similarities as well as
the differences in a form amenable for further, more detailed, intercomparisons. It is noted that
the drag on a comet nucleus or on the Sun from the outer flow is zero and that the presence of
neutral gas affects the stability of plasma flow patterns.
Subject headings: comets — hydromagnetics — interstellar : matter — plasmas — Sun : solar wind

I. INTRODUCTION II. THE FLOW REGIMES

Both a comet and the Sun have been modeled as a As depicted in Figure 1 for the solar case and Figure 2
source of fluid within a streaming flow. A comet has for the cometary case, there are in general five regions
been treated as a source of gas within the solar wind in the flow upstream of the source, separated by four
plasma (Ioffe 1966, 1968) and the Sun as a source of free boundaries. Downstream transitions to super-
plasma within the interstellar gas (Axford 1972; sonic flow across the sonic lines and possible tail
Baranov and Krasnobaev 1973). However, as both shocks provide additional complication. The inner-
systems are combinations of plasma and neutral gas, most flow from the source is subsonic in both cases,
with an external ionization source and a wide variation unlike for a normal fluid with y < 5/3, because of
of particle path lengths, the processes operating on the nonstandard contributions. For a comet, Probstein
various scales require careful examination. The full (1969) showed that the drag of a dust component
fluid description including four free boundary surfaces would give a transition A-B from subsonic to super-
is rather complex, so it is worth discussing whether sonic expansion, at a distance above the source surface
all the flow regimes exist and how far they decouple of order (pdusJpga,s) times the dust grain diameter. A
in the practical systems. supply of heat to the cometary gas can produce a
The source flow is essentially a combination of similar transition (Wallis 1974), as it does in the solar
supersonic jet and blunt-body flows, on which there is situation, where thermal conduction and hydro-
an extensive literature encompassing quantitative magnetic waves are presumed to play a role. Fully
reasoning and experimental verification in classical subsonic inner flows (“solar breeze” solutions) would
fluid dynamics (Hayes and Probstein 1966). The occur if the external pressure were high enough,
extension to the solar wind and space situation exceeding to order-of-magnitude the pressure at the
(Spreiter, Summers, and Rizzi 1970; Dryer, Rizzi, sonic transition; but it is, however, far too small in the
and Shen 1973) has been validated by numerous space- solar and cometary situations. The subsonic regions A
craft observations of the plasma environment of several are therefore fully decoupled from the outer flows and
planets. The latter workers, for example, used can be analyzed separately.
magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow calculations The cometary gas (Fig. 2) is collision-dominated in
for the blunt-body hypersonic analog to predict the the inner parts A and some of B. Ions and electrons
shape of the Jovian bow shock wave as well as the formed there, mainly in photoionization processes,
flow parameters in the magnetosheath. These pre- are closely coupled to the gas. But, outside some
dictions have been generally confirmed by the plasma radius A (from 102-5 to 104*5 km, depending on the
and magnetic field instruments on Pioneer 10 (Dryer source strength and particular gas), only the plasma
1974) and Pioneer 11 (Mihalov et al. 1975; Smith et al. behaves as a fluid. The ions and electrons continue to
1975) . We feel be wecoupled via electromagnetic
can confidently fields (possibly gener-
make the further
extension to cometary and interstellar plasmas. ated in instabilities of relative streaming or of
895

© American Astronomical Society • Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System

197 6ApJ. . .205 . .895W

896 WALLIS AND DRYER Vol. 205

V= 10-20 km/s
N [h]« 0.2/cm3
n [H> Q0l-003/cm3
B » 1-3xl0'6gauss
T < 8000 °K

Fig. 1.—Schematic flow regions and parameters for the solar source in interstellar gas. Regions A, Cl, and C2 are subsonic,
B and D supersonic. The interstellar gas returns to its ambient velocity by passing through a compression fan which, reinforced,
becomes a tail shock.

nonthermal distributions), while the gas moves as free
particles suffering occasional collisional and ionization
processes. On ionization the particles join the plasma
fluid. The neutral interstellar gas (Fig. 1) behaves every-
where as free particles except in one limited region
which we discuss below (g). The outer flow regions
B, C, and D, whose properties are summarized in
Table 1, refer solely to the plasma fluid, but are
modified by distributed sources representing collisions
and ionization processes in the neutral gas. Additional
comments follow :
a) The cometary plasma component by itself, when
it decouples from the gas in B (at radius A of Fig. 2),
is supersonic because energetic photoelectrons are
collisionally cooled (Wallis and Ong 1974).
b) The subsonic regions Cl and C2 are far more
extensive than in simple fluid flows, the effects of the
neutral gas being strong. In a comet, the upstream
extension of C2 is determined largely by the new ions
formed from the cometary gas (Biermann, Lüst, and
Wegmann 1974). It is far ahead of the contact dis-
continuity (C1-C2) and depends little on the latter’s
size. The interstellar hydrogen distorts the structure
of both regions Cl and C2 through charge-exchange
interactions with the plasma protons (quantitative
estimate in Appendix), and both these regions would
be broader than in a standard fluid.
c) The shock B-Cl terminating the supersonic solar
wind may be very weak or even nonexistent if the
influence of the neutral gas is strong enough. The

Fig. 2.—Schematic flow regions for the comet source in the solar wind. The circle radius A denotes the position where the radially
expanding neutral gas flow becomes collision-free. The shock and slip-plane structure in the wake could be complex because the
wake is supersonic. Note that a version of the internal shock has also been suggested for Jupiter by Kennel and Coroniti (1975).

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197 6ApJ. . .205 . .895W
No. 3, 1976 SUN AND COMETS
TABLE 1
Possible Flow Regions Upstream of the Control Source
Flow Regime Transition
A. Subsonic source flow
Continuous, within
a few source radii
B. Supersonic radial
expansion
Shock, where
Pstag == 0(poo)
Cl. Subsonic interior
plasma
Contact discontinuity
(perhaps flute or
Kelvin-Helmholz unstable)
C2. Subsonic exterior
plasma
Bow shock
D. Supersonic (-Alfvénic)
streaming
practical condition derived by comparing ionization
effects with the external magnetic pressure is (Wallis
1973)
B/N < 5 x 10-6 to 10"5 gauss cm3 .
d) The bow shock (C2-D) is weak and may not
exist in interstellar gas, as the magnetosonic Mach
number,
M = VI(B2hjbQnm + lykTjm)112 ,
can be less than unity for the currently favored para-
meters (Dalgarno and McCray 1972) shown in Figure 1.
The cometary bow shock is weak for a separate
reason : new cometary ions created ahead of the shock
reduce the flow Mach number there.
e) The contact discontinuity between the subsonic
regions Cl and C2 is potentially subject (e.g., Ersh-
kovich, Nusinov, and Chernikov 1972) to fluid
Kelvin-Helmholtz or MHD flute instabilities, which
would produce some of the inhomogeneous structures
of comet tails. In the comet head, however, a contact
discontinuity, judged to occur where the stagnation
pressure of the cometary plasma in A (pstag °c r-1)
roughly equals the external stagnation pressure
(Wallis and Ong 1974), would generally be situated
inside the radius A, where ionization, cooling, and
recombination processes are important. In these
circumstances, the “contact discontinuity” is not a
distinct boundary and should be stable. As the inter-
stellar plasma too is coupled strongly to the gas,
© American Astronomical Society • Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System
897
Sun/Interstellar Gas Comet/Solar Wind
Heating via conduction and/or Drag and heating of dust;
hydromagnetic waves evaporation of icy grains
Ionization + thermalization Photodissociative heating of
of new ions gas
Pstag ä r-2, decreasing M Ionization + cooling +
recombination
Pstag ~ r-1, large but finite M
Ion friction and cooling Enhanced cooling gives a
through charge exchange with denser and narrower region
gas
Plasma-gas friction via charge Wide region controlled by
exchange (perhaps affecting mass addition and cooling of
shock’s strength and position) new suprathermal ions
The shock is weak or perhaps Mass addition reduces
non-existent, because the effective mach number to
Alfvén speed1 is high: M^2
10-40 km s"
shearing velocities are small and the contact dis-
continuity may again be stable.
/) The wake of the heliosphere (Fig. 1) consists of
plasma originating from the solar wind and, being
strongly coupled to the interstellar gas via H-H +
charge exchange, moves with velocity V. Its electrons
cool slowly, so it stays subsonic,’ contracting laterally
as shown. A tail shock is necessary to suitably divert
a super-Alfvénic interstellar flow. The comet wake, on
the other hand, is supersonic, as it is a free expansion of
cometary plasma, possibly under viscous drag and
conductive heating from the solar wind. In theory, the
flow would remain supersonic with (Fig. 2) the region
B open to the tail and a complex system of expansion
waves, compression waves, shock waves (including
Mach “disks”) and slip surfaces (or vortex sheets) to
match up the flows. This interior or tail flow is there-
fore expected to resemble the well-known case (cf.
Wilcox et al. 1957; Adamson and Nicholls 1959) of
supersonic jet flow expansion into a low-density
medium. In practice, however, the comet tail is fre-
quently far from homogeneous.
g) The upstream stagnation point on the contact
discontinuity (hatched in Figs. 1 and 2) is clearly
singular in plasma flow that is partially coupled to
relatively moving gas. For the flow moves indefinitely
slowly close to the stagnation point, yet the gas is
being ionized at a finite rate. There may exist a cutoff
in collisional ionization, but charge-exchange and
photoionization processes continue. The inclusion of
extra sources to represent the new plasma does not
197 6ApJ. . .205 . .895W
898 WALLIS AND DRYER
Fig. 3.—Stagnation point flows: (a) shows an ordinary stag-
nation point flow, impossible if there is slight interaction
between the gas and plasma ; (b) illustrates possible modification
when an extra (anisotropic) source simulates the ionization of
neutral gas—the stagnation point is divided but not eliminated ;
(c) illustrates a possible solution, whereby the enhanced plasma-
gas interaction effectively excludes the gas from the plasma
stagnation region.
avoid the topological necessity for one or more stagna-
tion points (see Figs. 3a, b). The mathematical singu-
larity is avoided because the fluid description of the
plasma breaks down in some region. But with the ion
diffusion path around a gyroradius, we estimate (see
the Appendix) that this region is small for sizable
comets (0.1 A for comet Bennett) and extremely small
for interstellar gas (of order 10"7 A). The conclusion
is that the plasma and gas flows become strongly
APPENDIX
BREAKDOWN OF CONTINUUM DESCRIPTION NEAR STAGNATION POINT
The plasma motion can only be described as a
continuum flow, with particles following the stream
pattern, if the ion gyroradii and diffusion paths are
small. Diffusive effects, in particular momentum
transport, must become important close to a stationary
stagnation point. An analogous situation arises in
slightly rarefied gas flow past a cooled body, where
heat conduction becomes important near the stagna-
tion point (Shidlovskiy 1967).
In order to estimate the size of the diffusive region,
we use the incompressible solution to calculate the
approximate flow time. For a region of lateral dimen-
sion D and cylindrical symmetry, the streamlines and
flow velocity are
r2z = const, u = (C//D){r, —2z}. (Al)
1/2
Considering the streamline from {2 S, ^Z>} where
© American Astronomical Society • Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System
Vol. 205
coupled in the neighborhood of a stagnation point,
and relative motion is excluded. In the interstellar gas,
the neutral hydrogen is probably excluded from an
extended plasma stagnation region (Appendix), the
H-atom mean free path being less than the thickness
of the subsonic region. The stagnation region flow
could appear as in Figure 3c. For smaller comets
diffusive transport is significant (Appendix), but for
larger ones in which the gas-plasma coupling is
stronger, no stationary solution with subsolar stagna-
tion flow is possible. We would expect instead periodic
behavior, as described in the fountain model (Wallis
1968), and suggest that the plasma-gas interaction
underlies the formation of “envelope” structures in
cometary plasma.
in. CONCLUSIONS
Since the innermost flow near the central source is
subsonic, it is decoupled from the remaining flow. It
follows that the drag on a comet nucleus or on the Sun
from the outer flow is zero. The subsonic regions
between the outer and inner supersonic plasma flows
are much broader than in ordinary fluid flows, because
of ionization processes in the relatively streaming
neutral gas. Model calculations based on thin subsonic
regions (Baranov, Krasnobaev, and Kulikovskii 1970;
Ioffe 1968) are rather unrealistic. The plasma-gas
coupling may stabilize the contact discontinuity
between the plasma flows (point e), but will destabilize
the stagnation flow region (point g). Thus distorted
stationary flow solutions may be available in the
interstellar gas, but not in the cometary case.
M. K. W. acknowledges with thanks the hospitality
of the NOAA Space Environment Laboratory, where
this paper was conceived, and financial support under
a UKAEA Culham Laboratory contract.
8 « Z>, the position of minimum speed and the time T
to reach it are found to be
{V2, i}(D2S)1/3 , T = ^{DjU) In (D/S) . (A2)
The ions of a magnetized plasma may be considered
as gyrating about “guiding centers” which move with
the fluid, but jumping a gyroradius RL in successive
charge-exchange process at intervals r = {Na^vY1
[gas density A, ion velocity v = 0(U)]. The ions
diffuse a distance (TIt)1I2Rl in the flow time T, which
can be set equal to the minimum allowable value of
S. Alternatively,
2
one assigns the diffusion coefficient
K = %Rl It and observes that diffusive processes
become significant where the parameter r2/(4Ac J dz/u)
is less than unity. Either estimate gives the limit where
diffusive transport takes over as
(T/t)1I2Rl = Smin , (A3)
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No. 3, 1976 SUN AND COMETS 899

TABLE A1
Scale Sizes of the Diffusive Region Smln*
Regime A cm"3
Interstellar gas 0.2
Reaction of interstellar gas with heliosphere 0.6
Comet: larger 7 x 1056
smaller 7 x 10
* The ion gyrofrequency is taken as 0.02 s_1 in both cases—protons in 2 x 10-6 gauss or OH+ in 3.5 x 10-5 gauss fields. The
two entries for the interstellar gas are the same interaction situation, but for two different gas density, A, possibilities.
which corresponds by equation (A2) to
UT/D = i[ln (D/Rl) - i ln (UT/D) - i In (NDaex)].
(A4)
Diffusion along a magnetic field may have a different
scale from RL : this is unimportant for aligned field
flows, but otherwise a scale larger than the gyroradius
may be warranted.
Parameters calculated from equations (A3) and
(A4) are given in Table A1 for particular models, for
interstellar gas density and heliosphere size of Wallis
(1975); and for a cometary coma of H20/OH with
plasma strongly cooled and slowed down in advance
of the stagnation region (Wallis and Ong 1974). For
the comet case, the typical velocity and field, taken as
10 km s-1 and 5 x 10"5 gauss, are rather uncertain.
One hint is given by the observation of plasma
structures in the “larger” comet Bennett, implying
that diffusion did not dominate, while the contrary
could be true on present figures for smaller comets
which generally show more stable and less structured
plasma tails. However, the ion gyroradius at 400 km
is also large compared with flow scales in the smaller
comet examined.
On these estimates, each interstellar proton would
undergo Tjr # 30 charge-exchanging collisions, and
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103 km 2.1 10 2.1 0.07
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Kb
~ ¿ vRl ■
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Murray Dryer: Space Environment Laboratory, Environmental Research Laboratories, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO 80302
Max K. Wallis: Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St. Giles, Oxford OX1 3LB, England

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