Model Comparisons with Juno Observations of the Io Plasma Torus

Nasa’s JUNO spacecraft, now in its extended mission, is finally passing through the Io plasma torus (IPT) taking in situ measurements of the plasma environment using the JUNO-JADE instrument. Through September of 2025 we will have almost 40 passes through the IPT of JUNO observations. Further, there is recent evidence from ground based optical telescopes that Io recently had a major eruption increasing neutral emission close to Io around Thanksgiving of 2022 (C. Schmidt, personal communication, 2022). We have been developing a nominal torus model based on in situ plasma measurements from previous missions, emission modeling of UV spectra, and ground based optical emission derived plasma parameters. Physical chemistry modeling informs our model and is another point of comparison. We use Phipps & Bagenal (2021) to define the centrifugal equator, along with the newest JUNO based magnetic field model (Connerney et al. 2022), and using diffusive equilibrium to find the plasma distribution along a magnetic field line. We will compare our IPT model with observations from JUNO before, during, and after the Thanksgiving 2022 eruption. We will compare JUNO observations with a physical chemistry model of the IPT to constrain the source rate, radial transport diffusion coefficient, transport timescale, and how these vary throughout the eruption.