Discovery of Alfven waves planetward of the Rings of Saturn
File(s)EPSC2020-365-print.pdf (122.44 KB)
Published version
Author(s)
Southwood, David
Cao, Hao
Hunt, Greg
Shebanits, Oleg
Dougherty, Michele
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Between April and September 2017 in the final stages of the Cassini Saturn Orbiter mission the spacecraft executed 22 orbits passing planetward of the innermost ring, the D-ring. During periapsis passes on all these orbits oscillations were detected in the azimuthal magnetic field components on typical time scales from a few minutes to 10 minutes. We argue that the time-varying signals detected on the spacecraft are also primarily time-varying in the plasma frame. Nonetheless, we show that nearly all signals exhibit a distinct spatial effect, namely a magnetic node near the effective field line equator. The oscillations thus have a standing structure along the background magnetic field and it follows that they are field line resonances associated with Alfvén waves. The form of the signals suggests that the local field line resonances are most likely pumped from global sources. This is the first detection in a giant planet magnetosphere of a phenomenon known to be important at Earth.
Date Issued
2020-09-21
Date Acceptance
2020-09-01
Citation
2020, 14
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Volume
14
Copyright Statement
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
License URL
Source
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2020-09-21
Finish Date
2020-10-09
Coverage Spatial
Virtual