The MEFISTO and WPT Electric Field Sensors of the Plasma Wave Investigation on the BepiColombo Mio Spacecraft

Karlsson, Tomas; Kasaba, Yasumasa; Wahlund, Jan‐Erik; Henri, Pierre; Bylander, L.; Puccio, W.; Jansson, S.-E.; Åhlén, L.; Kallio, Esa; Kojima, Hirotsugu; Kumamoto, Atsushi; Lappalainen, K.; Lybekk, B.; Ishisaka, Keigo; Eriksson, Anders

doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00760-0

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…At the same time, the spacecraft carries a variety of magnetic field and electric field instruments, including the magnetometer, i.e., MPO/MAG (Glassmeier et al, 2010;Heyner et al, 2021) and Mio/MGF (Baumjohann et al, 2020). In particular, Mio/Plasma wave experiment (PWI) will provide the first electric field measurements from DC to 10 MHz (Karlsson et al, 2020;Kasaba et al, 2020), and search coil magnetometers with frequency up to 20 kHz (Yagitani et al, 2020). With these high sampling rate for magnetic field and electric field measurements, we can better understand the electromagnetic field waves and plasma waves in Mercury's magnetosphere and further our investigations of wave-particle interactions and the energetic particle environment of Mercury.…”

Section: Future Bepicolombo Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Mercury’s dynamic magnetosphere: Post-MESSENGER era and comparative magnetospheres

Sun

Dewey

Aizawa

et al. 2021

Sci. China Earth Sci.

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This review paper summarizes the research of Mercury’s magnetosphere in the Post-MESSENGER era and compares its dynamics to those in other planetary magnetospheres, especially to those in Earth’s magnetosphere. This review starts by introducing the planet Mercury, including its interplanetary environment, magnetosphere, exosphere, and conducting core. The frequent and intense magnetic reconnection on the dayside magnetopause, which is represented by the flux transfer event “shower”, is reviewed on how they depend on magnetosheath plasma β and magnetic shear angle across the magnetopause, following by how it contributes to the flux circulation and magnetosphere-surface-exosphere coupling. In the next, Mercury’s magnetosphere under extreme solar events, including the core induction and the reconnection erosion on the dayside magnetosphere, the responses of the nightside magnetosphere, are reviewed. Then, the dawn-dusk properties of the plasma sheet, including the features of the ions, the structure of the current sheet, and the dynamics of magnetic reconnection, are summarized. The last topic is devoted to the particle energization in Mercury’s magnetosphere, which includes the energization of the Kelvin-Helmholtz waves on the magnetopause boundaries, reconnection-generated magnetic structures, and the cross-tail electric field. In each chapter, the last section discusses the open questions related to each topic, which can be considered by the simulations and the future spacecraft mission. We end this paper by summarizing the future BepiColombo opportunities, which is a joint mission of ESA and JAXA and is en route to Mercury.

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Section: Future Bepicolombo Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Mercury’s dynamic magnetosphere: Post-MESSENGER era and comparative magnetospheres

Sun

Dewey

Aizawa

et al. 2021

Sci. China Earth Sci.

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“…However, the physics at these scales is exactly one of the main scientific objectives of the ongoing ESA/JAXA space mission BepiColombo (Benkhoff et al 2010). Different plasma instruments onboard the Mio spacecraft will provide measurements of: (i) the plasma density profile along the spacecraft trajectory, using different complementary experiments, namely, Langmuir probe measurements (Karlsson et al 2020), quasi-thermal noise measurements (Moncuquet et al 2006), and mutual impedance measurements (Gilet et al 2019), all within the Plasma Wave Investigation (PWI) consortium (Kasaba et al 2020), (ii) the electric field in the lower-hybrid frequency range (PWI), and (iii) the electron distribution function (MPPE/MEA, Mercury Plasma Particle Experiment and Mercury Electron Analyzer (Saito et al 2010)). This will enable us to directly address the physics of Mercury's strongly inhomogeneous magnetopause.…”

Section: Application To Mercury's Magnetopausementioning

confidence: 99%

Electron acceleration driven by the lower-hybrid-drift instability

Lavorenti

Henri

Califano

et al. 2021

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Context. Density inhomogeneities are ubiquitous in space and astrophysical plasmas, particularly at contact boundaries between different media. They often correspond to regions that exhibit strong dynamics across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Indeed, density inhomogeneities are a source of free energy that can drive various instabilities such as the lower-hybrid-drift instability, which, in turn, transfers energy to the particles through wave-particle interactions and eventually heats the plasma. Aims. Our study is aimed at quantifying the efficiency of the lower-hybrid-drift instability to accelerate or heat electrons parallel to the ambient magnetic field. Methods. We combine two complementary methods: full-kinetic and quasilinear models. Results. We report self-consistent evidence of electron acceleration driven by the development of the lower-hybrid-drift instability using 3D-3V full-kinetic numerical simulations. The efficiency of the observed acceleration cannot be explained by standard quasilinear theory. For this reason, we have developed an extended quasilinear model that is able to quantitatively predict the interaction between lower-hybrid fluctuations and electrons on long time scales, which is now in agreement with full-kinetic simulations results. Finally, we apply this new, extended quasilinear model to a specific inhomogeneous space plasma boundary, namely, the magnetopause of Mercury. Furthermore, we discuss our quantitative predictions of electron acceleration to support future BepiColombo observations.

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“…This means that we expect, at least for a significant part of the mission, a plasma sheath characterized by a local excess of electrons. The size of such plasma sheath shall be of the order of the Debye length λ D that is expected to be in the range 1–10 m in the plasma environment of Mercury, while the electric sensors (the MEFISTO antennas (Karlsson et al., 2020)) are 15 m long. Our investigation indicates that one has to include the plasma sheath of the Mio spacecraft in the modeling and the analysis of PWI‐AM2P spectra to retrieve satisfactorily the electron temperature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is the case for the PWI‐AM2P instrument onboard the Mio spacecraft of the BepiColombo mission. PWI‐AM2P uses two emitting and two receiving electric antennas installed on four 15 m wires (Karlsson et al., 2020) and the local Debye length is expected to range between 1 and 10 m in Mercury's magnetosphere (Kasaba et al., 2010). Hence, Debye length encountered by PWI‐AM2P is not always expected to be negligible with respect to the distance between MI electric sensors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space Plasma Diagnostics and Spacecraft Charging. The Impact of Plasma Inhomogeneities on Mutual Impedance Experiments

Bucciantini,

Henri,

Wattieaux

et al. 2023

JGR Space Physics

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Plasma diagnostic instruments are carried into space by satellites to measure in situ the properties of space plasmas. However, due to spacecraft charging, satellites perturb the surrounding plasma, that reacts by enveloping the platform and its instruments with a short scale, strongly inhomogeneous plasma region called plasma sheath. Such plasma sheath perturbs particles and electric field measurements performed onboard the satellite. Mutual impedance experiments are a type of in situ diagnostic technique used in several space missions for the identification of the plasma density and the electron temperature. The technique is based on the electric coupling between emitting and receiving electric sensors embedded in the plasma to diagnose. Such sensors are surrounded by the plasma sheath, which is expected to affect the plasma response to mutual impedance emissions. In this context, we quantify for the first time the impact of the plasma sheath on the diagnostic performance of mutual impedance experiments. For this purpose, we use a full kinetic Vlasov‐Poisson model to simulate numerically mutual impedance experiments in an inhomogeneous medium. For the first time, we explain the locality of mutual impedance measurements. We find that mutual impedance plasma density diagnostic are not affected by the plasma sheath (dn/n < 10%). The experiment retrieves the density of the plasma unperturbed by the satellite’s presence. The electron temperature diagnostic, instead, presents significant perturbations if the plasma sheath is ignored. To mitigate such electron temperature errors, the plasma sheath needs to be included in the analysis of mutual impedance measurements.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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The MEFISTO and WPT Electric Field Sensors of the Plasma Wave Investigation on the BepiColombo Mio Spacecraft

Cited by 8 publications

References 57 publications

Review of Mercury’s dynamic magnetosphere: Post-MESSENGER era and comparative magnetospheres

Review of Mercury’s dynamic magnetosphere: Post-MESSENGER era and comparative magnetospheres

Electron acceleration driven by the lower-hybrid-drift instability

Space Plasma Diagnostics and Spacecraft Charging. The Impact of Plasma Inhomogeneities on Mutual Impedance Experiments

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