Drifting discrete Jovian radio bursts reveal acceleration processes related to Ganymede and the main aurora.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37788989.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-41617-8 and PMC identifier 10547699.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Radio detection at high time-frequency resolutions is a powerful means of remotely studying electron acceleration processes. Radio bursts have characteristics (polarization, drift, periodicity) making them easier to detect than slowly variable emissions. They are not uncommon in solar system planetary magnetospheres, the powerful Jovian "short bursts (S-bursts)" induced by the Io-Jupiter interaction being especially well-documented. Here we present a detection method of drifting radio bursts in terabytes of high resolution time-frequency data, applied to one month of ground-based Jupiter observations. Beyond the expected Io-Jupiter S-bursts, we find decameter S-bursts related to the Ganymede-Jupiter interaction and the main Jovian aurora, revealing ubiquitous Alfvénic electron acceleration in Jupiter's high-latitude regions. Our observations show accelerated electron energies are distributed in two populations, kilo-electron-Volts and hundreds of electron-Volts. This detection technique may help characterizing inaccessible astrophysical sources such as exoplanets.