Detection of dusty plasma near the E-ring of Saturn

Electron temperatures in Saturn’s plasma disc

“…It should be noted here that we have deliberately used somewhat lower neutral densities than actually observed by Cassini, which would increase the loss term even further. Also, recent Cassini observations indicate that the thermal ion population in the plasma disc is at most 1-8 eV due to dust-plasma interactions (Wahlund et al, 2009), which is almost an order of magnitude lower than the Sittler et al (2006; values. The difference in observed ion temperature estimates is most probably due to the fact that the RPWS Langmuir Probe and the CAPS/IMS instruments sample different parts of the ion distribution (Wahlund et al, 2009).…”

Plasma dynamics in Saturn's middle-latitude ionosphere and implications for magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling

“…The magnetic field strength at the equator ( B 0 ) is about 2.1 × 10 −5 T (e.g., Belenkaya et al, 2006 ). Wahlund et al (2009) and Gustafsson and Wahlund (2010) showed that the electron temperature was 1-2 eV in the inner magnetosphere, so we used 2 eV as the magnetospheric electron temperature at the upper boundary of equatorial region ( Sakai et al, 2013 ). We assume a constant 2 eV as an average thermal energy (i.e., temperature) in the inner magnetosphere since we are investigating how the magnetospheric plasma affects the ionospheric plasma.…”

Characteristics of charged dust inferred from the Cassini RPWS measurements in the vicinity of Enceladus

“…The plasma parameters are inferred from the LP current-voltage characteristics as described by Wahlund et al (2005Wahlund et al ( , 2009). …”