Models of Electron Energetics in the Enceladus Torus

Details Models of Electron Energetics in the Enceladus Torus Models of Electron Energetics in the Enceladus Torus

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm32a..02c&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM32A-02

Physics

[2740] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, [2756] Magnetospheric Physics / Planetary Magnetospheres, [5443] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Magnetospheres, [5780] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets / Tori And Exospheres

Scientific paper

The inner magnetosphere of Saturn contains a mixture of plasma and neutral gas, the dominant source of which is the icy satellite Enceladus. Water vapor and water dissociation products are present throughout the magnetosphere but they are particularly concentrated in a torus surrounding Saturn at the orbit of Enceladus. The Hubble Space Telescope observed OH in the torus and other neutral species (mainly water) have been measured by the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) onboard the Cassini spacecraft. Relatively cold plasma, dominated by water group ion species, was measured by instruments onboard both the Voyager and Cassini spacecraft. The electron distribution function in this torus appears to include both a colder thermal population (seen for example by the Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave Spectrometer’s Langmuir probe -- RPWS/LP) and hotter suprathermal populations (seen by the electron spectrometer part of the Cassini plasma analyzer -- CAPS/ELS). We present a model of electron energetics in the torus. One part of this model utilizes an electron energy deposition code to determine electron fluxes versus energy. The model includes photoelectron production from the absorption of solar radiation as well as electron impact collisional processes for water and other neutral species. Another part of the model consists of an energetics code for thermal electrons that generates electron temperatures. Heating from Coulomb collisions with photoelectrons and with hot pick-up ions was included, as was cooling due to electron impact collisions with water. We show that solar radiation is the dominant source of suprathermal electrons in the core neutral torus, in agreement with recently published CAPS-ELS data. We predict electron thermal energies of about 2 eV, which is somewhat low in comparison with recently published RPWS-LP data. The implications of these results for plasma densities in the torus will also be discussed.

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