Potential of Energetic Neutral Helium Atoms to Resolve Structure of the Local Interstellar Medium within 0.1 Parsec

Expected fluxes of energetic neutral helium atoms (He ENA) emitted from the heliosheath and created by the Ribbon secondary ENA mechanism are relatively small for the directions of the nose and flanks of the heliosphere. The mean free path against ionization in the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC) for the He ENA reaches ~8,000 AU for atoms of energy ~5 keV, i.e., about 10 times higher than the mean free path against ionization for hydrogen atoms for the same energy. Thus observation of potential sources in the Local Interstellar Medium by an ENA detector could be possible for distances over a dozen thousand AU. This includes a potential to observe processes at the LIC boundary, to which the closest distance is likely smaller than 10,000 AU. Measurements of He ENA could potentially be used to bridge the gap between direct in situ sampling of our Galactic environment, available from Ulysses and IBEX, and the parsec-scale telescopic observations of interstellar absorption lines.

Estimates of the expected heliospheric emission of He ENA are taken from a simple model of the heliosphere, for which we have obtained results consistent with HSTOF observation of He ENA. We use analytical model of the secondary ENA emission with a simple heliolatitude dependence in the supersonic solar wind. For the extraheliospheric sources, we examine simple He ENA production models on distant (<~0.1 pc) boundary layer. One such model, proposed earlier as an extraheliospheric source for the IBEX Ribbon at the hypothetic interface between the LIC and the Local Bubble, is now extended to provide estimates of the fluxes at a wider energy range, from a few to a few tens of keV, taking various distances to the interface into account.

Including an appropriate mass spectrometer in the IMAP energetic neutral atom detector will give opportunity to distinguish helium atoms from the general ENA flux. This added capability would provide IMAP with a potential to discover possible enhancements in the He ENA fluxes other than from the heliotail direction, which could enable studying kinetic non-equilibrium processes operating in the “dark gap” region currently inaccessible for observations by IBEX and by traditional astrophysical techniques. These processes are potentially ubiquitous in the interstellar medium.