A Technique for Retrieving the Exospheric Number Density Distribution from Pickup Ion Ring Distributions

Ion pickup by the solar wind is ubiquitous in space plasma. Because pickup ions are originally produced by ionization of an exospheric neutral atmosphere, their measurements contain information on the exospheric neutral abundance. Here we established a method to retrieve exospheric number densities,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The planetary science journal 2024-08, Vol.5 (8), p.180
Main Authors: Masunaga, Kei, Terada, Naoki, Leblanc, François, Harada, Yuki, Hara, Takuya, Sakai, Shotaro, Yokota, Shoichiro, Seki, Kanako, Yamazaki, Atsushi, McFadden, James. P., Usui, Tomohiro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Exosphere
Mars
Pickup ions
Planetary magnetospheres
Sciences of the Universe
Solar wind
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Summary:Ion pickup by the solar wind is ubiquitous in space plasma. Because pickup ions are originally produced by ionization of an exospheric neutral atmosphere, their measurements contain information on the exospheric neutral abundance. Here we established a method to retrieve exospheric number densities, by analyzing the ion velocity distribution functions of pickup ions measured by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft. We successfully retrieved exospheric oxygen density distributions at altitudes ranging from 1000 to 10,000 km around Mars except for the vicinity of the bow shock. This method can be applied to other space missions to study the upper atmosphere of planets, moons, and other small bodies in our solar system, where pickup ions exist.
ISSN:2632-3338
2632-3338
DOI:10.3847/PSJ/ad65d4