Exospheric heating by pickup ions at Titan

W. L. Tseng*, W. H. Ip, A. Kopp

*此作品的通信作者

研究成果: 雜誌貢獻期刊論文同行評審

17 引文 斯高帕斯(Scopus)

摘要

Titan has a very extensive atmosphere and exosphere which interact strongly with the corotating magnetospheric plasma. Some of the new pickup ions created in the vicinity of the exosphere will re-impact the upper atmosphere causing additional energy input. Previous investigations of the atmospheric collisional interaction of the pickup ions have generally assumed the atmosphere to be spherically symmetric. From the Voyager and Cassini observations, we know that the magnetic field configuration and plasma flow field is highly asymmetric. To study the possible spatial variation in the pickup ion influx, we have employed the plasma data of the three dimensional MHD simulation of Kopp and Ip [Kopp, A., Ip, W.-H. Asymmetric mass loading effect at Titan's ionosphere. J. Geophys. Res. 106, 8323-8332, 2001] to compute the trajectories of the pickup ions. In this work, we calculate the ion influx and energy deposit into Titan's exobase for the H2+, CH4+ and N2+ pickup ions separately. The model results of four different Titan's orbital locations are also presented.

原文英語
頁(從 - 到)54-60
頁數7
期刊Advances in Space Research
42
發行號1
DOIs
出版狀態已發佈 - 2008 7月 1
對外發佈

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • 航空工程
  • 天文和天體物理學
  • 地球物理
  • 大氣科學
  • 空間與行星科學
  • 一般地球與行星科學

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