Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol.14, EPSC2020-851, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-851
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Particle Motions in Planetary Magnetic Fields: Europlanet Service

Patrick Guio1,2, Nicholas Achilleos2, and Nicolas André3
Patrick Guio et al.
  • 1Department of Physics and Technology, Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
  • 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  • 3Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse, France

The trapping of charged particles in planetary magnetic fields is a process which underpins many important aspects of planetary magnetospheres, such as ring current evolution, particle acceleration, and the flow of current through the system, both free and bound. As part of our effort for the Europlanet project, the UCL group have developed codes which accurately model the trajectories of charged particles in magnetic field models appropriate for the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. These will form the basis of a service for the SPIDER task. In this presentation, we show examples of ion trajectories at both planets for representative 'start values' of equatorial distance, pitch angle, and values of particle energy. The simulations provide an indication of how particle orbits become less adiabatic as one approaches energies where gyroradii become comparable to magnetic field curvature radius. The disk-like fields of the gas giants are particularly effective at 'scattering' adequately high-energy particle trajectories as they cross the equator, where the field lines are most 'pinched' and have the smallest length scales.

How to cite: Guio, P., Achilleos, N., and André, N.: Particle Motions in Planetary Magnetic Fields: Europlanet Service, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 September–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-851, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-851, 2020