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, EPSC2020-902, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-902
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Heavy ion charge states in Jupiter’s polar magnetosphere inferred from auroral megavolt electric potentials

George Clark1, Barry Mauk1, Peter Kollmann1, Chris Paranicas1, Fran Bagenal2, Robert Allen1, Sam Bingham1, Scott Bolton3, Ian Cohen1, Robert Ebert3, William Dunn4, Dennis Haggerty1, Steve Houston1, Caitriona Jackman5, Elias Roussos6, and Abi Rymer1
George Clark et al.
  • 1Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD , USA
  • 2Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
  • 3Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
  • 4Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Department of Space and Climate Physics, University of College London, London, England
  • 5Astronomy and Astrophysics Section, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, Ireland
  • 6Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany

In this presentation, we exploit the charge-dependent nature of field-aligned potentials in Jupiter’s polar cap auroral region to infer the charge states of energetic oxygen and sulfur. To-date, there are very limited and sparse measurements of the > 50 keV oxygen and sulfur charge states, yet many studies have demonstrated their importance in understanding the details of various physical processes, such as, X-ray aurora, ion-neutral interactions in Jupiter’s neutral cloud and particle acceleration theories. In this contribution, we develop a technique to determine the most abundant charge states associated with heavy ions in Jupiter’s polar magnetosphere. We find that O+ and S++ are the most abundant and therefore iogenic in origin. The results are important because they provide 1) strong evidence that soft X-ray sources are likely due to charge stripping of magnetospheric ions and; 2) a more complete spatial map of the oxygen and sulfur charge states, which is important for understanding how the charge- and mass-dependent physical processes sculpt the energetic particles throughout the Jovian magnetosphere. 

How to cite: Clark, G., Mauk, B., Kollmann, P., Paranicas, C., Bagenal, F., Allen, R., Bingham, S., Bolton, S., Cohen, I., Ebert, R., Dunn, W., Haggerty, D., Houston, S., Jackman, C., Roussos, E., and Rymer, A.: Heavy ion charge states in Jupiter’s polar magnetosphere inferred from auroral megavolt electric potentials, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 September–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-902, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-902, 2020