Millas, D; Achilleos, N; Guio, P; Arridge, CS; (2021) The compressibility of the Jovian magnetosphere. Presented at: 15th HELAS Conference, Patras, Greece.

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Abstract

The magnetospheres of giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, are a unique type of space laboratories for magnetized plasma. Their rapid rotation, composition and size result in major differences compared to the terrestrial magnetosphere, the most prominent being the presence of a disc-type magnetic structure. Each magnetosphere responds to external or internal drivers; the most important external driver is the solar activity. The response of the magnetosphere is quantified by the ompressibility index, calculated from the magnetopause radius as a function of the total pressure. We present results of a numerical study of the compressibility of the Jovian magnetosphere, using first an numerical implementation of Caudal’s iterative scheme to create an axisymmetric magnetodisc structure. A large ensemble of models is produced and treated as virtual observations (or “crossings”). The models are created using a different system size (parametrized by the magnetopause distance) and hot plasma content (parametrized by the hot plasma index) for each case. We evaluate methods of different order to obtain the compressibility index and discuss the effects of the system size. We compare the results with observations of the Jovian magnetosphere and with similar studies focused on the magnetosphere of Saturn. A complementary step of our work is the implementation of an angular velocity correction algorithm (Pontius scheme), using the equatorial magnetodisc structure in a consistent way and examine the major differences with a simple dipole model.

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