Components of the Dynamically Coupled Heliosphere

Abstract

The description of the heliosphere as a system has emerged recently due to a deeper understanding of the heliosphere’s numerous interlinked components. The call for a system view is illustrated by several areas of discovery involving the sources and acceleration of energetic particles, the links between particle acceleration and magnetic field structure, and the dynamic solar sources of heliospheric magnetic field meso-scale and micro-scale structure. These research areas have seeded the discovery of the inner and outer pickup ion sources; the discovery of the outer source of anomalous cosmic rays; the discovery that nearly radial magnetic fields in co-rotating rarefaction regions and associated energetic particle dwells are caused by the motions of open magnetic field footpoints across coronal hole boundaries; the relevance of these footpoint motions for ubiquitous statistical acceleration in slow solar wind and for Favored Acceleration Locations at the Termination Shock (FALTS); and the Ulysses discoveries of multiple unplanned crossings of the distant cometary tails of Hyakutake and McNaught-Hartley. Here, we review these emerging areas of heliospheric research and discuss how they are leading to a deeper understanding of our intrinsically dynamic and interlinked heliosphere.