Detection of magnetospheric ion drift patterns at Mars
Abstract
Mars lacks a global magnetic field, and instead possesses small-scale crustal magnetic fields, making its magnetic environment fundamentally different from intrinsic magnetospheres like those of Earth or Saturn. Here we report the discovery of magnetospheric ion drift patterns, typical of intrinsic magnetospheres, at Mars usingmeasurements fromMarsAtmosphere and Volatile EvolutioNmission. Specifically, we observewedge-like dispersion structures of hydrogen ions exhibiting butterfly-shaped distributions within the Martian crustal fields, a feature previously observed only in planetary-scale intrinsic magnetospheres. These dispersed structures are the results of driftmotions that fundamentally resemble those observed in intrinsic magnetospheres. Our findings indicate that the Martian magnetosphere embodies an intermediate case where both the unmagnetized and magnetized ion behaviors could be observed because of the wide range of strengths and spatial scales of the crustal magnetic fields around Mars.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2311.06151,
title = {Detection of magnetospheric ion drift patterns at Mars},
author = {Chi Zhang and Hans Nilsson and Yusuke Ebihara and Masatoshi Yamauchi and Moa Persson and Zhaojin Rong and Jun Zhong and Chuanfei Dong and Yuxi Chen and Xuzhi Zhou and Yixin Sun and Yuki Harada and Jasper Halekas and Shaosui Xu and Yoshifumi Futaana and Zhen Shi and Chongjing Yuan and Xiaotong Yun and Song Fu and Jiawei Gao and Mats Holmström and Yong Wei and Stas Barabash},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.06151},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
10 pages, 6 figures