Ion acceleration in Mars’ twisted magnetotail
| Autor: | Shannon M Curry, P Tatum, D Mitchell, J G Luhmann, J McFadden, S Ruhunusiri, G DiBraccio, R Ramstad, S Xu |
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| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. 517:L121-L125 |
| ISSN: | 1745-3933 1745-3925 |
| Popis: | Mars lacks a global magnetic field and instead has a unique, ‘hybrid’ magnetosphere composed of crustal magnetic fields, which are stronger in the Southern hemisphere than the Northern hemisphere. These crustal fields are believed to drive a twist in the magnetotail at Mars. This is important because heavy ions escape from this induced magnetotail, which is a major source of atmospheric erosion. We present analysis of heavy ions produced in Mars’ upper atmosphere that are transported downtail along the twisted current sheet and observed by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. We identified O+, O$_2\, ^+$, and CO$_2\, ^+$ being accelerated to different energies at a range of distances downtail and found that heavy ions in the 10–50 eV energy population have the highest flux. We present tail slices of ion fluxes for different interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) configurations based on the BY component of the IMF and find that the different configurations affect the degree of tail twist and the transport of heavy ions in the induced magnetotail lobes. We find that the total escape rate for O+, O$_2\, ^+$, and CO$_2\, ^+$ is 5.5e24 s-1, with 50% escaping between 2–200 eV. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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