Solar wind effect on the multi-fluid plasma expansion in the Venusian upper ionosphere

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik IV, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
e-mail: ssalem92@hotmail.com
² Basic and Applied Science Department, College of Engineering and Technology, Arab Academy for Science and Technology (AAST), Port Said, Egypt
³ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Port Said University, Port Said 42521, Egypt
⁴ Centre for Theoretical Physics, The British University in Egypt (BUE), El-Shorouk City, Cairo, Egypt
⁵ Centre for mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, Department of Mathematics, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200B, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Received: 23 December 2022
Accepted: 26 January 2024

Abstract

Inspired by the observations suggesting that at altitudes of about 1000 km the interaction between solar wind streams and Venus’ ionosphere plasma leads to ions acceleration and outflow, the influence of different solar wind physical parameters, such as densities, temperatures and initial streaming velocities, has been studied. The ionosphere plasma system consists of two positive ion populations O⁺, H⁺ and electrons along with the solar wind streaming protons and electrons. We calculated the generated oxygen and hydrogen ions flow velocities and the electric fields. In addition, we calculated rough estimates for the escaping flux of ion populations (O⁺, H⁺) from Venus’ ionosphere and compared them to observations. To a large extent, we found that the estimates match. We also discuss the relevance of ionospheric ion acceleration and outflow from Venus’ upper.