Acceleration of interplanetary pick-up ions and anomalous cosmic rays Original Research Article

It may not be doubted anymore that anomalous cosmic rays (ACRs) are produced in the heliosphere from interplanetary pick-up ions through their acceleration at the solar wind termination shock. However, there is no general agreement in the community of heliospheric researchers concerning the mechanism of injection of the pick-up ions into the shock acceleration. We discuss here three possible ways for pick-up ions to be involved into the acceleration process at the termination shock: (1) preacceleration of pick-up ions in the whole region from the Sun up to the termination shock by solar wind turbulences and interplanetary shock waves, (2) local preacceleration of pick-up ions in a vicinity of the termination shock by shock surfing, and (3) formation of high-velocity tails in pick-up ion spectra consisting of secondary pick-up ions which are produced in the supersonic solar wind due to ionization of energetic neutral atoms entering from the inner heliosheath.