Energy Flow in Saturn's Ion Cyclotron Wave Belt

Details Energy Flow in Saturn's Ion Cyclotron Wave Belt Energy Flow in Saturn's Ion Cyclotron Wave Belt

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufm.p43a1019l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #P43A-1019

Physics

2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 2772 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2471), 6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

When molecules in Saturn's water-group neutral cloud are ionized, they are accelerated by the electric field associated with the motion of the magnetospheric plasma. This acceleration brings the pick-up ions to the bulk plasma speed and gives them free energy that leads to the growth of ion cyclotron waves. Ion cyclotron waves propagating along the magnetic field have been observed near the equatorial plane on almost all of Cassini's orbits through the inner magnetosphere. On near-equatorial orbits, these waves are observed to peak below the gyrofrequencies of water-group (O, OH, H2O) and molecular oxygen (O2) ions. On inclined orbits, the velocity of the spacecraft along the waves' direction of propagation produced Doppler shifts in the wave frequency. Using this shift, we calculate the phase velocity of the waves through the wave belt. We find that near the magnetic equator, the waves are propagating both parallel and anti-parallel to the magnetic field and have phase velocities of 40-50 km/s, one-half to one-third of the local Alfven speed. Beyond +/- 0.04 Rs of the magnetic equator, the water-group waves are propagating away from that plane and increasing in power until about +/- 0.25 Rs. Then they quickly damp. The wave power profile is similar for molecular oxygen waves, except these waves are about one-tenth as strong. Beyond +/- 0.3 Rs of the magnetic equator the water-group waves are absent, but the molecular oxygen waves persist until higher latitudes, although with low power. We discuss the energy carried by these waves, considering both ion species and where the background plasma gains energy from their absorption.

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