THE PRODUCTION OF DIFFERENT PICK-UP ION SPECIES IN THE HELIOSPHERE AND THEIR CONVECTION TOWARDS THE 3-DIMENSIONAL TERMINATION SHOCK

The production of different pick-up ion species in the heliosphere due to local ionization of corresponding neutral gas species entering fro m the local interstellar medium is investigated. Starting from the usu al values for the cosmic elemental abundances and taking into account the most probable conditions for a fractional ionization of the local interstellar medium, we consider first the effect of an element-select ive interface transmission in order to achieve values for the inflow o f neutral elements into the heliosphere. It is then shown that the ele ment-specific heliospheric distributions of neutral gases in connectio n with the relevant local ionization rates lead to element-specific up wind-downwind asymmetries in the resulting pick-up ion production rate s. Starting from those we calculate spatial heliospheric patterns of p ick-up ion fluxes for the different species assuming that these specie s are essentially convected with the solar wind bulk flow towards the outer heliospheric regions. As we are going to show here, the effects of specific ion drifts and diffusive motions superimposed on the solar wind bulk motion in all cases can be considered as negligible, unless pick-up ion energies at their convection to larger heliospheric dista nces are substantially increased by factors of the order of 100 or mor e. We present radial and longitudinal profiles of the different pick-u p ion fluxes which, upon their arrival at the termination shock, may s erve as measure of production rates for corresponding anomalous cosmic ray species.