Spatial and Temporal Variation of Ion Cyclotron Waves in Saturn's Neutral Cloud

Details Spatial and Temporal Variation of Ion Cyclotron Waves in Saturn's Neutral Cloud Spatial and Temporal Variation of Ion Cyclotron Waves in Saturn's Neutral Cloud

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p41a1251l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P41A-1251

Physics

2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 2772 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2471), 6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

Photoionization, impact ionization, and charge exchange lead to a significant loss of Saturn's E-ring neutral torus. Upon ionization neutrals in keplerian orbits are accelerated to corotational bulk velocities with a ring- beam velocity of determined by the difference of the corotational and keplerian velocities. This pick-up velocity is great enough to generate water-group ion cyclotron waves through much of the E ring beginning near Enceladus. The energy flux radiating away from the equatorial region carried by the ion-cyclotron waves is close to 50% of the energy picked up by the ring beam. We analyze these waves in order to calculate the erosion of Saturn's neutral cloud with radial distance, and thus the mass loading rate of the magnetosphere. We find that between 3.5 and 6.5 Saturn radii, the neutral cloud loses about 7 kilograms of water-group neutrals per second. Additionally, we examine enhancements in the neutral cloud erosion near Enceladus and Tethys, as well as a possible enhancement near Dione. The waves are observed as a consistent feature of this region of space, but their power varies over an order of magnitude.

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