Driving Saturn's magnetospheric periodicities from the upper atmosphere/ionosphere

Abstract

Saturn's magnetospheric structure and the intensity of radio frequency emissions from its immediate surroundings are modulated at close to the planet's rotation period. Analogous rotation-modulated variations at Jupiter are readily interpreted as effects of the non-axisymmetric intrinsic magnetic field. At Saturn, to the contrary, the high level of axial symmetry in the intrinsic field suggests that the periodicity is not internally imposed. A number of mechanisms have been proposed to account for the observations. Each model explains a subset of the observations in a qualitative manner, but no quantitative models yet exist. Here, using a magnetohydrodynamic simulation, we investigate the magnetospheric perturbations that arise from a localized vortical flow structure in the ionosphere near 70 S-latitude that rotates at roughly the rate of planetary rotation. The model reproduces nearly quantitatively a host of observed magnetospheric periodicities associated with the period of the dominant (southern) radio frequency emissions during the Cassini epoch including rotating, quasi-uniform magnetic perturbations in the equatorial plane, rotating mass density perturbations, periodic plasmoid releases that we associate with observed bursts of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), periodic oscillations of magnetospheric boundaries, current sheet flapping, and periodic modulation of the field-aligned currents linked to Saturn's kilometric radiation (SKR). The model is not unique but is representative of a class of models in which asymmetric flows in the (as yet unmeasured) upper atmosphere couple to the ionosphere and generate currents that flow into the magnetosphere. It can be extended to include the second periodicity that has been associated with SKR emissions in the northern hemisphere. © 2012 by the American Geophysical Union.