Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2009
In this paper the theoretical aspects of the stochastic acceleration of photoionized pick-up ions upstream of a comet's bow shock are examined. The acceleration is due to the resonant interaction of the ions with Alfvén waves. By making physically reasonable assumptions for the turbulent fields and by including an exponential spatial factor in the injection term, it is found that, with spatial diffusion ignored, exact solutions can be found.