On the Importance of Searching for Oscillations of the Jovian Inner Radiation Belt with a Quasi-Period of 40 Minutes

• Main Authors: Yu-qing Lou, Chen Zheng
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: South Pole; Jupiter; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.336.1546; http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0307276v1.pdf

Accepted. Received.; in original form. Experiments aboard the Ulysses spacecraft discovered quasi-periodic bursts of relativistic electrons and of radio emissions with ∼ 40−minute period (QP-40) from the south pole of Jupiter in February 1992. Such polar QP-40 burst activities were found to correlate well with arrivals of high-speed solar winds at Jupiter. We advance the physical scenario that the inner radiation belt (IRB) within ∼ 2 − 3 Jupiter’s radius RJ, where relativistic electrons are known to be trapped via synchrotron emissions, can execute global QP-40 magnetoinertial oscillations excited by arrivals of high-speed solar winds. Modulated by such QP-40 IRB oscillations, relativistic electrons trapped in the IRB may escape from the magnetic circumpolar regions during a certain phase of each 40-min period to form circumpolar QP-40 electron bursts. Highly beamed synchrotron emissions from such QP-40 burst electrons with small pitch angles relative to Jovian magnetic fields at ∼ 30 − 40RJ give rise to QP-40 radio bursts with typical frequencies <