Europa Modifies Jupiter's Plasma Sheet

Technical Report · Sat May 18 04:00:00 EDT 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2378042· OSTI ID:2378042

Szalary, J. R. ^[1]; Saur, J. ^[2]; McComas, D. J. ^[1]; Allegrini, F. ^[3]; Bagenal, F. ^[4]; Bolton, S. J. ^[5]; Ebert, R. W. ^[5]; Kim, Kyoung (Thomas) Ho ^[6]; Livadiotis, G. ^[1]; Poppe, A. R. ^[7]; Valek, P. ^[5]; Wilson, R. J. ^[4]; Zirnstein, E. J. ^[1]

---

1. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
2. Univ. of Cologne (Germany)
3. Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX (United States); Univ. of Texas at San Antonio, TX (United States)
4. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
5. Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX (United States)
6. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
7. University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)

Jupiter's plasma sheet has been understood to be primarily composed of Io-genic sulfur and oxygen, along with protons at lower mass density. These ions move radially away from Jupiter, filling its magnetosphere. The material in the plasma sheet interacts with Europa, which is also a source of magnetospheric pickup ions, primarily hydrogen and oxygen. Juno's thermal plasma instrument JADE, the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment, has provided comprehensive in situ observations of the composition of Jupiter's plasma sheet ions with its Time-of-Flight mass-spectrometry capabilities. Here, we present observations of the magnetospheric composition in the Europa-Ganymede region of Jupiter's magnetosphere. We find material from Europa is intermittently present at comparable densities to Io-genic plasma. The intermittency of Europa-genic signatures suggests Europa's neutral oxygen toroidal cloud is more localized to Europa's vicinity than its hydrogen cloud. These observations reveal a more complex and compositionally diverse magnetosphere than previously thought.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001
• OSTI ID: 2378042
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--23-30560
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS