1,2,3,4,4,5,- 1Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, United States of America (barry.mauk@jhuapl.edu)
- 2Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- 3Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
- 4Space, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark
- 5NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
- 6Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, USA
- 7University of Colorado, LASP, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Jupiter’s poleward (Zone II) main aurora exhibits bi-directional electron acceleration; upward acceleration dominates but downward acceleration generates strong aurora. During Juno’s first perijove (PJ1), the upward acceleration manifested as narrow electron angular beams (within ~5° of the magnetic field) over the 30-1200 keV energy range of Juno’s Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Investigation (JEDI). These beams can be simply connected (non-uniquely) to >10 to perhaps 100’s of MeV electrons that penetrated the radiation shielding of the camera head of the Magnetometer Investigation’s Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC). The most intense of those multiple MeV populations are shown to have been highly directional and propagating upwards. How auroral processes generate such beams is unknown. With azimuthal symmetry assumed (not demonstrated here), these beams provided >1026 s-1 of >30 keV electrons to Jupiter’s vast magnetosphere. That southern auroral source alone can completely replenish the >30 keV electron population within Jupiter’s vast magnetosphere, between 15 and 80 RJ, within 3.5 Earth days. The auroral source therefore may represent a critical and perhaps dominating source of energetic electrons to Jupiter’s magnetosphere and perhaps Jupiter’s electron radiation belts. (See Mauk et al., 2024)
Mauk, B. H., Ma, Q., Becker, H. N., Jørgensen, J. L., Denver, T., Connerney, J. E. P., et al. (2024). Upward, MeV-class electron beams over Jupiter's main aurora. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2024GL108799. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL108799
How to cite: Mauk, B., Ma, Q., Becker, H., Jørgensen, J., Denver, T., Connerney, J., Allegrini, F., Bagenal, F., Bolton, S., Clark, G., Haggerty, D., Kollmann, P., and Paranicas, C.: Upward, MeV-class electron beams over Jupiter’s Main Aurora;A critical seed population for Jupiter’s uniquely energetic radiation belts, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–12 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-776, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-776, 2025.
