Dust In The Interplanetary Medium—Interactions With The Solar Wind.

We discuss cosmic dust in the interplanetary medium focusing on its interaction with the solar wind and recent observational results related to such interactions. The dust contributes to pick-up ions in the solar wind and dust collisional vaporization can explain the observed heavy inner source pick-up ions, as well as the presence of molecular ions. We predict that ions generated by dust destruction inside 0.1 AU are multiply charged in the solar wind near 1 AU. The mass loading of the solar wind during passage of cometary dust trails appears too small to explain the interplanetary field enhancements that are observed in solar wind magnetic field measurements. Nano dust in the interplanetary medium can be efficiently accelerated in the solar wind and hypervelocity impacts of nano dust onto the spacecraft can explain frequent events measured with the plasma instrument onboard STEREO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]