Cometary X-Rays: Line Emission Cross Sections for Multiply Charged Solar Wind Ion Charge Exchange
Abstract
Absolute line emission cross sections are presented for 1 keV amu−1 charge-exchange collisions of multiply charged solar wind ions with H2O. These cross sections can be used to model charge-exchange processes with cometary targets with similar binding energies such as H, O, CO2 and CO. A parameter-free model is used to successfully predict the recently observed x-ray spectra of comet Linear C/1999 S4 and McNaught-Hartley C/1999 T1. We show that the resulting spectrum is extremely sensitive to the time variations of the solar wind composition.
Recommended Citation
S. Otranto et al., "Cometary X-Rays: Line Emission Cross Sections for Multiply Charged Solar Wind Ion Charge Exchange," Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Institute of Physics - IOP Publishing, May 2007.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-4075/40/10/010
Department(s)
Physics
Sponsor(s)
National Agency for the Promotion of Science and Technology (Argentina)
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
United States. Department of Energy
Keywords and Phrases
Astroparticles; Astrophysics
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0953-4075
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2007 Institute of Physics - IOP Publishing, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 May 2007
