Rice Convection Model Simulations of Plasma Circulation in Saturn's Inner Magnetosphere

Details Rice Convection Model Simulations of Plasma Circulation in Saturn's Inner Magnetosphere Rice Convection Model Simulations of Plasma Circulation in Saturn's Inner Magnetosphere

May 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agusmsm43b..06w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2008, abstract #SM43B-06

Physics

2700 Magnetospheric Physics (6939), 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions (2431), 6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

We will report results from new RCM simulations of centrifugally driven magnetospheric convection at Saturn. In particular, we have addressed two curious properties revealed by Cassini observations. (1) Several magnetospheric properties, including electron density, are modulated by the SKR longitude of the spacecraft [e.g., Gurnett et al., Science, 316, 442, 2007]. A two-cell corotating convection model has been invoked by Gurnett et al. and by Goldreich and Farmer [JGR, 112, A05225, 2007] to explain this modulation. We have simulated this system by imposing an initially asymmetric plasma distribution in the Enceladus torus region, and find that the initial distribution must be at least ~40% asymmetric in order to give a factor ~2 asymmetry at 5 Saturn radii as reported. (2) The inflow sectors ("injection events") are much narrower in longitude than the interspersed outflow sectors. There is no obvious explanation for this in linear instability theory, nor in previous RCM simulations without an active plasma source. Our recent inclusion of an active continuous plasma source provides a possible explanation.

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