Modeling the ion abundances in Saturn's inner magnetosphere

Details Modeling the ion abundances in Saturn's inner magnetosphere Modeling the ion abundances in Saturn's inner magnetosphere

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsm21b2022f&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SM21B-2022

Physics

[2756] Magnetospheric Physics / Planetary Magnetospheres, [6280] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

Water ejected from Enceladus's plumes provides much of the material that fills both the dense H2O torus centered on Enceladus's orbit, as well as Saturn's neutral clouds which extend at least four times farther from Saturn. Photo- and impact ionization transforms a few percent of these neutrals into the ions co-rotating with Saturn's magnetosphere, and charge exchange is responsible for a substantial redistribution among the hydrogen and water-group ions, though it does not alter the overall plasma density. In this paper, we explore ion abundances at Saturn with a chemistry model developed to include all of these processes. Building on our earlier attempts, we now include a source of neutrals from a neutral cloud model, so as to advance our description to include radial and latitudinal variations. At the same time, we now prescribe a radially-varying plasma diffusion coefficient to study the magnetosphere's inability to contain centrifigually-unstable plasma. We also are interested in the effect of hot electrons (102-103 eV) beamed along field lines into the equatorial region chiefly of interest. Our parameter study of radial diffusion and hot-electron flux is anchored to available Cassini CAPS water-group and proton abundances. Preliminary results suggest an injection of ~10 MW by hot electrons, and reveal promising radial trends in the water-group abundances that agree well with Sittler et al. (2008). We can also simulate an Enceladus torus dominated H3O+ -- a result not obtainable prior to coupling the chemistry and neutral cloud models.

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