Radial Diffusion and the Io Torus Structure

Details Radial Diffusion and the Io Torus Structure Radial Diffusion and the Io Torus Structure

Sep 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.2320t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #23.20; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1156

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We examine radial diffusion of mass and energy in the Io plasma torus in order to understand the observed complex spatial structure. We use the standard radial diffusion equation appropriate for a magnetosphere, and track ion energy assuming ion Coulomb coupling with electrons. This research differs from previous models in two aspects. First, we include the scale-height relationship between ion energy and density, thus enabling us to track equatorial density as well as NL(2) . Second, we compare these results with the radial density and temperature structure obtained from modeling the [SII] 6731 Angstroms images taken by Schneider and Trauger (ApJ, 450, 450, 1995) [see Taylor et al., DPS, 1995]. In particular, we compare these results with the retrieved parallel ion temperature profile, the double-peaked equatorial density profile, and the Voyager NL(2) profile. We determine the possible combinations of diffusion coefficient (DLL) and mass and energy source functions required to match the data. We compare the results with previous estimates of diffusion coefficient (Herbert F., DPS, 1995; Cheng et al., JGR, 88, 3936, 1983) and source function (Brown M.E., GRL, 21, 847, 1994). This work was supported in part by JPL/Galileo grant 958675.

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