Peter H. Yoon
IPST, University of Maryland
Analysis of Jovian Radio and Plasma Waves Detected by Juno (one of four NASA’s New Frontiers Program Missions)
NASA’s New Frontiers Program aims to explore planetary science problems with top priorities identified by the community. New Horizons (mission to Pluto), Juno (Jupiter mission), OSIRIS-REx (asteroid), and Dragonfly (Saturn’s moon Titan) are competitively selected. Under the collaborative research effort between the University of Maryland and University of Iowa, and supported by NASA’s New Frontier Data Analysis Program, we have begun to analyze the radio and plasma wave data taken by Juno. This talk will overview our research by first outlining some fundamental plasma theory of waves in the magnetized plasma environment. It is well known that radio and plasma wave emissions take place in various magnetized planetary magnetospheres including the Earth’s auroral zone and magnetosphere (e.g., Auroral Roar, MF Bursts, Auroral Kilometric Radiation or AKR) as well as in other planetary environments such as Jupiter’s and Saturn’s magnetosphere. Recently, plasma wave activities were detected even in the unmagnetized planet Mars. Modeling these radio and plasma wave emissions involve the theory of magnetoionic modes (X, O, W, and Z) and the study of their growth conditions. In the past, various linear growth analyses involving X, O, Z, and W modes have been carried out, and quasilinear transport theory with model wave intensities have been successfully employed for electron acceleration and loss processes in the context of the radiation belt physics. In our recent work, we also adopted the quasilinear wave analysis to analyze the Juno data, but unlike the customary approaches widely adopted in the radiation belt community, our approach is self-consistent in that the spectral wave intensity is calculated self-consistently rather than imposed as given. By employing such a method, recent works successfully reproduced the whistler wave dynamic spectrum and a combined spectra made of ordinary mode EM waves and upper-hybrid (Z) mode waves detected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, thus enhancing the scientific return of the New Frontiers mission.