Other
Scientific paper
Apr 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011dda....42.0804j&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #42, #8.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Other
Scientific paper
Hypervelocity impacts of interplanetary micrometeoroids with orbiting ring particles generate dusty debris of all sizes. These ejecta particles become electrically charged by interactions with orbiting plasma and solar photons. Accordingly, they experience both gravity and Lorentz forces, whose combined effects cause interesting and complex dynamics. For simplicity, we model the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Saturn by centered and aligned dipoles and investigate the stability of motion for grains launched from circularly-orbiting parent bodies. We begin by determining the stability in both the radial and vertical directions as a function of charge-to-mass ratio and distance from the planet numerically. We find that positively-charged dust grains in the micron-size range are radially unstable, colliding with the planet if launched from within synchronous orbit and escaping entirely if launched outside this distance. Escaping grains have been observed as high-velocity dust streams from Jupiter and Saturn. In addition, positively and negatively-charged smaller grains are vertically unstable and spiral up magnetic field lines to sustain large latitudinal oscillations or be lost to the planet's atmosphere.
We then undertake local and global stability analyses and derive stability criteria that match our numerical data extremely well. Our analysis builds upon work led by Burns, Hamilton, Horanyi, Howard, Mitchell, Northrop, Schaffer, and others. Some stability boundaries can be obtained analytically while others require more complicated semianalytic methods. Four of our five stability boundaries do not appear in the literature and the fifth matches the findings of Hamilton and Burns (1993). Finally, we expand our numerical runs to include the effects of tilted and offset magnetic field components. We find that regions of vertical instability expand significantly for the more complicated fields, and a large new region of radial instability appears outside synchronous orbit for negatively-charged grains. Regions of radial instability for positive grains, by contrast, change little.
Hamilton Douglas P.
Jontof-Hutter Daniel
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