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Are Sporadic Plasma Layers at 90 km in the Mars Ionosphere Produced by Solar Energetic Particle Events
Author(s) -
Withers Paul
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2020ja028120
Subject(s) - mars exploration program , ionosphere , altitude (triangle) , atmospheric sciences , plasma , atmosphere of mars , flux (metallurgy) , geophysics , solar wind , solar energetic particles , physics , astrobiology , martian , environmental science , coronal mass ejection , materials science , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics , metallurgy
Layers of dayside ionospheric plasma have been sporadically observed on Mars at 90 km altitude. Several causes for these layers have been proposed. Here we test the hypothesis that solar energetic particle (SEP) events produce these layers. Several independent lines of evidence show that SEP events do increase plasma densities at low altitudes. We compare the occurrence of low‐altitude plasma layers to a proxy for the flux of solar energetic particles at Mars. For the ionospheric layers, we use 71 instances of low‐altitude plasma layers found in 5,600 electron density profiles acquired by Mars Global Surveyor. For the proxy for solar energetic particle flux, we use the flux recorded in the highest energy channel of the Mars Global Surveyor Electron Reflectometer. We find that these low‐altitude plasma layers are not significantly more likely to occur during SEP events.