Tests of ionospheric control of young injection events identified from magnetometer observations at Saturn

Abstract:

Kennelly et al. (2013) reported that young plasma injection events observed in Saturn’s nightside magnetosphere and identified from plasma wave signatures are modulated at the period associated with the winter hemisphere. In a system unstable to interchange, radial motion of flux tubes is constrained by the “line-tying” effect of high ionospheric conductance (Southwood and Kivelson, 1989). Slippage of a flux tube would then occur initially in the hemisphere in which the ionospheric conductance is lowest. Saturn’s ionospheric conductances vary not only with season, but also with rotation phase because of the presence of a pattern of rotating field-aligned currents that drive “planetary period oscillations” (Jia and Kivelson, 2012). The conductance should minimize near the center of the downward current region and, at this rotation phase in the winter hemisphere, the growth rate of the instability would be largest, accounting for control by the northern period. With motion starting in the winter hemisphere, the flux tube would develop a tilt of predictable sense and the initial inward motion of the interchanging flux tube would occur at a specific rotation phase of the winter ionosphere. For a subset of the Kennelly events, we found that the tilt and phase are consistent with expectations based on the control of displacement by ionospheric conductance. Many additional young interchange events have been identified by K. K. Khurana [personal communication, 2015] whom we thank for making the list available. We examine this more extensive set of events and use them to investigate the proposed mechanism more fully.

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Kennelly, T. J., J. S. Leisner, G. B. Hospodarsky, and D. A. Gurnett (2013), J. Geophys. Res. Space Physics, 118, 832–838.

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