Stationary plasma-field equilibrium states in astropause boundary layers - I. General theory

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Abstract
We have theoretically investigated the transition layer between a stellar wind plasma and the surrounding regime of magnetized interstellar plasma, i.e. the astropause boundary layer. For the description of the ‘microscopic’ structures we use a planar representation of the transition zone geometry. Here the plasma is taken to be dominated by instability-induced collective relaxation processes as, for example, modified two-stream instabilities, keeping the effective electron and proton temperatures close to each other. These are caused by strong couplings between the plasma constituents and the equilibrium wave field. This permits a quasi-hydrodynamic description of the plasma flow in a two-fluid approximation. For this case we develop a system of differential equations describing consistently the dynamical variables of the plasma and the magnetic and electric fields in the transition region. We discuss integrals of this system and show that it can be reduced to one ordinary differential equation. This equation is solved in terms of elliptic integrals and gives an implicit representation of magnetic and electric fields and the density.

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