Plasma Waves in and around the Moon

Abstract

Plasma waves are observed in almost all the solar system objects such as planets, their satellites, comets and interplanetary medium. In planetary ionospheres, typical plasma density range is 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> – 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">6</sup> cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> and plasma temperature about 0.1 eV which is capable of sustaining plasma waves. A number of planetary satellites such as Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto of Jupiter and Saturnian satellites such as Titan, Enceladus and Rhea, are found to have plasma waves in their ionospheres. Earth’s natural satellite Moon, which has a tenuous atmosphere and even a more tenuous surface bound ionosphere, also support plasma waves around it. It is important to study the plasma waves as these waves play significant role in the dynamics of a space plasma system by controlling the scattering and loss of energetic charged particles and also provide information on solar wind-planet interactions, the energy distribution in plasma, etc. This paper summarizes the plasma waves observed in and around the Moon so far in the form of a brief review.