Plasma Injection and Circulation at Saturn.

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2730 Magnetosphere: Inner, 2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2760 Plasma Convection (2463), 2772 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2471), 6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

Saturn has a distributed source of cold (< 100 eV) electrons inside L ~ 12 associated with Saturn's satellites, rings, and extended neutral cloud. Phase space density analyses by Rymer et al. [2007] have shown that the cold component has a local source, probably due to ionisation of the neutral cloud components. These cold electrons are heated to the observed energies through Coulomb collisions and other interactions with ions, and transported slowly outward. Like at Jupiter, magnetic flux lost through cold plasma outflow is balanced by the injection of hot outer magnetospheric plasma inward. Phase space density contours of the hot (> 100 eV) electron component at Saturn are consistent with a source in the outer magnetosphere feeding inward transport accompanied by adiabatic heating. Several studies have shown that small-scale injection events are a ubiquitous feature of Saturn's magnetosphere [Burch et al., 2005, Hill et al., 2005, Leisner et al. 2005, André et al. 2005] and these are thought to be the source of the observed hot electron component. Rymer et al. [2008] suggest that, along with losses to the neutral cloud, inwardly transported electrons turn around as they drift out of the small inflow channels and flow back to the outer magnetosphere - thus contributing to the hot electron component "butterfly" pitch angle distributions observed by Burch et al. [2007] and attributed to outward flow from an inner magnetospheric source. Empirically, therefore, it is clear that plasma injection at Saturn happens and that it is apparently asymmetric, with inflow channels much smaller than outflow. Here we will discuss the evidence for asymmetric radial flow and how charge separation due to gradient and curvature drift and centrifugally driven drift might contribute to radial transport.

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