Thomsen, MF; Coates, AJ; (2019) Saturn's Plasmapause: Signature of Magnetospheric Dynamics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics , 124 (11) pp. 8804-8813. 10.1029/2019ja027075.

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Abstract

We explore the paradigm that Saturn's plasmapause marks the boundary between the magnetic flux tubes that have been circulating around the planet for some time, accumulating a dense load of Enceladus‐sourced material, and those that have recently undergone tail reconnection, shedding the bulk of the cold plasma and retaining a more tenuous, heated population. A centrifugally‐driven interchange instability should develop at this boundary, producing fingers of outward‐propagating dense plasma and of inward‐propagating hot, tenuous plasma. The plasmapause should thus be identifiable as a transition from mostly‐dense‐with‐some‐tenuous to mostly‐tenuous‐with‐some‐dense plasma populations. Electron densities from the Cassini CAPS/ELS instrument are used to identify the location of this transition for all of the low‐latitude (<5° from the magnetic equator) passes through Saturn's inner/middle magnetosphere. The boundary is typically found near and somewhat beyond L=10 (i.e., at ~10 Rs from the planet), with a local time asymmetry such that it is closer to the planet on the night side than on the day side.

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