Distribution of high energy electron drop-outs in the upper atmosphere of Titan

Details Distribution of high energy electron drop-outs in the upper atmosphere of Titan Distribution of high energy electron drop-outs in the upper atmosphere of Titan

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm11c1765b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM11C-1765

Physics

[2732] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings

Scientific paper

Titan is embedded in a highly variable plasma environment. It is affected by the flapping motion of Saturn's magnetodisk which causes fluctuations in both the charged particle intensities and magnetic field magnitudes. The upper atmosphere of Titan interacts with the magnetic flux tubes of Saturn's magnetosphere. Thermal electrons - due to their small, few tens of kilometers gyroradii - are considered as frozen to the magnetic field lines, and bounce along them between the magnetic poles of Saturn. Due to gradient and curvature drift the electrons bound to the flux tubes approaching Titan can drift towards the the lower atmosphere and may be lost via inelastic scattering and ionization. According to Gan et al., (1993) a flux tube that gets attached to the atmosphere of Titan would be depleted over a time scale of an electron bounce period. For electrons in the energy range of ~30-50 keV the depletion time is approximately a minute, or less. In this study we analyzed the electron data measured by the MIMI-LEMMS instrument in the energy range of ~28-50 keV. We give an overview of the spatial distribution of the energetic electron drop-outs for flybys TA-T70. In some cases the flux tubes are not entirely depleted in the process. We discuss the possible reasons showing case studies and long term statistics. We found that the altitude range of the dropout signatures vary in a relatively broad altitude range between ~990-6300 km. There is also a relation between the altitude and the average background particle intensity of Titan's broader environment. The drop-out altitudes also depend on the flux tube geometry. Another interesting observation is that during Titan encounters that were located between ~16-23 h Saturn Local Time, the background electron intensities were always in the higher regime, which might be an implication for the magnetospheric characteristics of that region.

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