ON THE DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION OF H-ATOMS IN THE PROBLEM OF THE SOLAR-WIND INTERACTION WITH THE LOCAL INTERSTELLAR-MEDIUM

This paper is devoted to the analysis of the models of the solar wind interaction with the local interstellar medium (LISM) self-consistentl y taking into account mutual influence of plasma (electrons and proton s) and neutral (H atoms) components of the LISM. The axisymmetric inte raction model of Baranov and Malama [1993], that used the kinetic desc ription of H atoms motion together with the hydrodynamic approximation for the plasma component, showed that the distribution functions of t he all H atom populations are essentially not Maxwellian. The hydrodyn amic model by Zank et al. [1996] is based on the Maxwellian distributi on functions of the LISM and solar wind hydrogen atoms. The comparison s of the results obtained on the basis of the kinetic model by Baranov and Malama [1993] and multifluid model by Zank et al. [1996] show tha t the distributions of H atom parameters have large quantitative as we ll as qualitative distinctions. A number of theoretical predictions an d relevant, experimental data are analyzed.