Collaborative Research: SHINE: Understanding the Connection between the Abundance of Helium in the Interplanetary Medium and the Origin of the Solar Wind in the Corona

两个新特性的变化相对丰富的氦氢在太阳风最近观察到风飞船:(i)这一比率是一个线性函数的太阳风速度从250 km / s到550 km / s,和(2)的比率进行为期6个月的周期调制,在他/ H的最大一个固定的太阳风速度发生在的时候,地球是最遥远的日面赤道。这项研究将利用这个新发现的效应作为彻底调查日冕和太阳风等离子体之间联系的基础，这些联系跨越了过去30年来5个不同航天器的观测。将与来自其他航天器的研究人员以及理论家和数值建模者合作，将星际间He/H比的观测与太阳起源联系起来。这些特征对目前公认的太阳风模式提出了挑战。氦的丰度是对太阳风形成模型以及太阳光球、日冕和行星际磁场之间潜在联系的敏感测试。

Two new features in the variation of the relative abundance of helium to hydrogen in the solar wind have recently been observed by the WIND spacecraft: (i) This ratio is a linear function of the solar wind speed in the range from 250 km/s to 550 km/s, and (ii) The ratio undergoes a six-month periodic modulation in the sense that the maximum in He/H at a fixed solar wind speed occurs at the times when the Earth is most distant from the heliographic equator. This study will use this newly discovered effect as the basis for a thorough investigation of the connection between coronal and solar wind plasmas spanning observations by five different spacecraft taken over the last 30 years. Collaborations will be developed with investigators from these other spacecraft and with theorists and numerical modelers to connect the interplanetary observations of the He/H ratio back to its solar origins. These features present challenges to the currently accepted paradigm of solar wind. The abundance of helium is a sensitive test of models of solar wind formation and of the underlying connections between solar photospheric, coronal and interplanetary magnetic fields.