Plasma-ion-induced Sputtering And Heating Of Titan'S Atmosphere

Details Plasma-ion-induced Sputtering And Heating Of Titan'S Atmosphere Plasma-ion-induced Sputtering And Heating Of Titan'S Atmosphere

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.2706t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #27.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.528

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Plasma-ion-induced sputtering and heating of Titan's
atmosphere
O.J. Tucker (1), R.E. Johnson (1), M. Michael (1), V.I. Shematovich (1,2)
J.H. Luhmann (3), S.A. Ledvina (3)
(1) University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA (2) Institute of Astronomy RAS,
Moscow 109017, Russia, (3) University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Titan is unique among the outer solar system icy satellites in having an atmosphere with a column density about ten times that of the Earth's atmosphere. Atmospheres equivalent in size similar to that at Titan would have been removed from the icy Galilean satellites by the plasma trapped in the Jovian magnetosphere (Johnson 2004). In this paper we describe the deposition of energy, the erosion and the expansion of the upper atmosphere of Titan using Direct Simulation Monte Carlo models (Shematovich et al. 2003; Michael et al. 2005). These calculations are used to calibrate semi-empirical models of atmospheric sputtering (Johnson 1994) that can be employed in interpreting Cassini data at Titan. It is shown that the globally averaged flux of magnetospheric and pickup ions deposit more energy in Titan's upper atmosphere than solar radiation. Using a number of plasma conditions, the temperature and density vs. altitude above the exobase and the rate of escape are calculated and compared to available Cassini data.
References: Johnson, R.E. "Plasma-induced Sputtering of an Atmosphere" in Space Science Reviews 69 215-253 (1994). Johnson. R.E., “ The magnetospheric plasma-driven evolution of satellite atmospheres” Astrophys. J. 609, L99-L102 (2004). Michael M., R.E. Johnson, F. Leblanc, M. Liu, J.G. Luhmann, and V.I. Shematovich, "Ejection of nitrogen from Titan's atmosphere by magnetospheric ions and pick-up ions", Icarus 175, 263-267 (2005). Shematovich, V.I., R.E. Johnson, M. Michael, and J.G. Luhmann,"Nitrogen loss from Titan", JGR 108, No. E8, 5087, doi:10.1029/2003JE002094 (2003).
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