Interstellar Neutral Atoms in the Heliosphere: Predictions for IBEX-LO

The flow of local interstellar gas into the heliosphere has been observed indirectly with several methods. These neutral atoms are unperturbed by the interplanetary magnetic field and provide a probe of the conditions in the local interstellar cloud. The low energy instrument on board the Interstellar Boudary Explorer (IBEX-LO) will convert these particles to negative ions (via scattering from a CVD diamond surface) for measurement by standard mass and energy analysis techniques. Although the direct measuremet of the interstellar flow is not the primary science goal of the IBEX mission, it will provide a valuable new dataset which can be used as input for heliospheric modelers. Recent calibration measurements of IBEX-LO at the University of Bern have shown that the signal from the helium component of the LISM will be stronger than expected. Here we use the existing measurements interstellar neutral parameters as well as calibration results to predict the signal seen by IBEX-LO from the interstellar neutral flow.