MHD Study of the Force Balance in the Plasma Disk of the Saturnian Inner Magnetosphere

Details MHD Study of the Force Balance in the Plasma Disk of the Saturnian Inner Magnetosphere MHD Study of the Force Balance in the Plasma Disk of the Saturnian Inner Magnetosphere

May 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agusm.p32a..07j&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2009, abstract #P32A-07

Physics

2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 2764 Plasma Sheet, 6275 Saturn, 6280 Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

The dynamics of the saturnian magnetosphere is largely controlled by the planetary spin at a rate of about 10.5 hours. In addition, in the inner magnetosphere, Enceladus creates neutrals that is picked up at a rate of a few kilograms per second and spun up to the corotational velocity to form a torus. The gas and plasma density peaks at the Enceladus orbit. In this torus, the majority of the gas particles travel at their keplerian speed of 14km/s, while the bulk of the plasma rotates at 40km/s as a response to the rigid spinning of the saturnian magnetic field. The corotating plasma torus feels a centrifugal force that is balanced by the magnetic tension force. The frozen-in saturnian magnetic field is in turn moved outward to contain the plasma near the spin equator. As an essential step to understand the role that Enceladus plays in the inner Saturnian system, we investigate the force balance in the torus plasma and the possible effect of charge exchange with the Enceladus neutral plume, using our Saturn-centered MHD model and the recent Cassini observations.

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