The 3D Structure of Saturn Magnetospheric Neutral Tori Produced by the Enceladus Plumes
Name
JGR Space Physics - 2021 - Smith - The 3D Structure of Saturn Magnetospheric Neutral Tori Produced by the Enceladus Plumes.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.42 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1dc229450cdbf46948401f1192980aef
Author(s)
Smith, Howard Todd
Richardson, John D
Date Issued
February 4, 2021
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Citation
Smith, H. T., & Richardson, J. D. (2021). The 3D structure of Saturn magnetospheric neutral tori produced by the Enceladus plumes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 126, e2020JA028775.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This research provides updated and validated spatial distributions of Enceladus-generated H2O, OH, and O neutral tori. These tori are produced by the primary neutral source, Enceladus, and consist of populations of coorbiting neutral particles that provide the bulk of heavy molecules to Saturn's (neutral particle dominant) magnetosphere. We conducted self-consistent neutral particle and plasma modeling that is constrained and validated by all relevant Cassini and Hubble Space Telescope observations. Our results include a three dimensional (3D) spatial distribution of all three neutral tori. Significant findings include (1) short-term plume variability combines to produce an average H2O source rate of ∼280 kg/s; (2) Enceladus plume variability does not impact the neutral tori distribution because it occurs on time scales less than the orbital periodicity (<17 h); (3) H2O source torus particles quickly dissociate in <65 days while only ∼22% are directly ionized; (4) the resulting OH torus dissociates in <40 days and only ∼11% are directly ionized; (5) ∼59% of the significantly dispersed O torus is directly ionized; and (6) the near plume environment is very important and relatively small changes (<0.5 eV) in the core electron population within the plume region dramatically change the H3O+ abundance.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Space Research
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020ja028775
