Simulation of anomalous cosmic ray charge spectra at the heliospheric termination shock Original Research Article

Recently the multicharged ion fluxes of Anomalous Cosmic Rays have been measured. Moreover, the ions with high ionic charges turn out to be the most abundant at high energies (≥ 20 MeV/nucleon). If the principal source of this component is interplanetary pickup ions, collisional ionization by interstellar components (neutral hydrogen and helium, ambient protons and electrons) could take place during its acceleration at the solar wind termination shock. We present the calculated charge spectra for C and O species near the termination shock, which show that these ions cannot be fully ionized during their acceleration.