Physics – Plasma Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsm21a1979m&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SM21A-1979
Physics
Plasma Physics
[2704] Magnetospheric Physics / Auroral Phenomena, [2794] Magnetospheric Physics / Instruments And Techniques, [6984] Radio Science / Waves In Plasma, [7847] Space Plasma Physics / Radiation Processes
Scientific paper
We have developed a general-purpose numerical ray-tracing code (PyTracer) to study the propagation of auroral kilometric radiation (AKR) in an inhomogeneous plasma. It is based on the three-dimensional cartesian form of Hamilton's canonical equations derived by Haselgrove (1963). We use the code to study two outstanding problems in auroral radiophysics: 1. How does AKR escape from low-density cavities in the Earth's magnetosphere? 2. Why is the Saturnian kilometric radiation polarization systematically change with magnetic latitude at large distances from Saturn? For the terrestrial cavity case, we find that the radiation escapes only quasi-longitudinally, and is strongly refracted upward. This is consistent with the 'tangent beaming' model (Mutel et al. 2008) derived from multi-spacecraft VLBI observations of source positions, and with dynamic spectra of AKR observed by the Polar spacecraft as it traversed the auroral zone (Menietti et al. 2011). By analyzing rays for RX-mode and Z-mode, the recently observed X-Z gap on WBD Cluster spectra is easily explained, and implies that Z-mode is often generated by CMI with comparable intensity to the better-known RX-mode. For Saturn, we show that certain RX-mode rays which are still elliptically polarized may mode-convert to LO-mode at the plasmasphere boundary, so that the converted radiation retains high degree of ellipticity. The PyTracer source is written in Python, is highly modular, and is easily modified e.g. using other density or magnetic field models. It will be available for web download in early December 2011.
Menietti Douglas J.
Mutel Robert L.
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