Dynamics of solar wind protons reflected by the Moon

Solar system bodies that lack a significant atmosphere and significant internal magnetic fields, such as the Moon and asteroids, have been considered as passive absorbers of the solar wind. However, ion observations near the Moon by the SELENE spacecraft show that a fraction of the impacting solar wind protons are reflected by the surface of the Moon. Using new observations of the velocity spectrum of these reflected protons by the SARA experiment on-board the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at the Moon, we show by modeling that the reflection of solar wind protons will affect the global plasma environment. These global perturbations of the ion fluxes and the magnetic fields will depend on microscopic properties of the object's reflecting surface. This solar wind reflection process could explain past ion observations at the Moon, and the process should occur universally at all atmosphereless non-magnetized objects.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

The extended, relativistic hyperon star model

In this paper an equation of state of neutron star matter which includes strange baryons in the framework of Zimanyi and Moszkowski (ZM) model has been obtained. We concentrate on the effects of the isospin dependence of the equation of state constructing for the appropriate choices of parameters the hyperons star model. Numerous neutron star models show that the appearance of hyperons is connected with the increasing density in neutron star interiors. Various studies have indicated that the inclusion of delta meson mainly affects the symmetry energy and through this the chemical composition of a neutron star. As the effective nucleon mass contributes to hadron chemical potentials it alters the chemical composition of the star. In the result the obtained model of the star not only excludes large population of hadrons but also does not reduce significantly lepton contents in the star interior.Comment: 22 pages, revtex4, 13 figure

The nucleon and mesons effective masses in the Relativistic Mean-Field Theory

Nucleon and meson effective masses in the nonlinear Relativistic Mean - Field Theory (RMF) introducing a nonlinear omega - rho and sigma coupling motivated by the Quark Meson Coupling model (QMC) is explored. It is shown that, in contrast to the usual Walecka model, not only the effective nucleon mass m_{eff,N} but also the effective sigma, rho meson masses (m_{eff, sigma}, m_{eff, rho}) and the effective omega meson mass m_{eff, omega} are nucleon density dependent.Comment: 11 pages, iop latex2e, 7 colour figures, revised version of nucl-th/0011084, accepted to Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle, presented on "Mesons & Light Nuclei '01", Prague, June 200