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Centrifugal Equator in Jupiter’s Plasma Sheet
Author(s) -
Phipps Phillip,
Bagenal Fran
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2020ja028713
Subject(s) - jovian , physics , equator , magnetosphere , jupiter (rocket family) , plasma sheet , dipole , longitude , current sheet , mercury's magnetic field , geophysics , magnetic field , solar wind , latitude , astrophysics , astronomy , magnetohydrodynamics , interplanetary magnetic field , planet , saturn , space shuttle , quantum mechanics
In Jupiter’s magnetosphere, the structure of the plasma sheet depends on the magnetic field geometry and the centrifugal forces on the plasma. We present a simple formulation for the centrifugal equator, the farthest point along a magnetic flux tube from the planetary spin axis, for Jupiter’s torus to plasma sheet region (5–30 jovian radii). The formulation is based on a dipole magnetic field and azimuthally symmetric current sheet, both tilted by 9.5° toward System III west longitude of 201°. We find a good fit to such a model with a hyperbolic tangent function varying sinusoidally with longitude. The latitudinal angle of the derived centrifugal equator relative to the jovigraphic equator changes from the dipolar value (2/3 of the dipole tilt) around 5 jovian radii to close to the full dipole tilt at 25 jovian radii.