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The 3D Structure of Saturn Magnetospheric Neutral Tori Produced by the Enceladus Plumes
Author(s) -
Smith Howard Todd,
Richardson John D.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2020ja028775
Subject(s) - enceladus , torus , magnetosphere , plume , saturn , physics , plasma , astrophysics , population , ionization , energetic neutral atom , neutral particle , astronomy , ion , meteorology , geometry , mathematics , demography , quantum mechanics , sociology , planet
This research provides updated and validated spatial distributions of Enceladus‐generated H 2 O, 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 H 2 O 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) H 2 O 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 H 3 O + abundance.