Survey of Saturn electrostatic cyclotron harmonic wave intensity

Abstract

AbstractWe conduct a survey of electrostatic electron cyclotron harmonic (ECH) emissions observed at Saturn by the radio and plasma wave science investigation on board the Cassini spacecraft. These emissions are known to be effective at interacting with electrons in the terrestrial inner magnetosphere, producing electron scattering into the loss cone and acceleration (cf. Horne and Thorne, 2000; Thorne et al., 2010). At Saturn ECH emission occurs with high probability and at strong intensity near the magnetic equator, outside the Enceladus torus in the range ~5 < L < ~10. Inside the inner boundary of the torus, ECH emissions are also observed near the equator and at higher latitude. Intensity levels of ECH emission are comparable to those observed at Earth, higher than Saturn chorus and Z‐mode emission, and are likely to scatter electrons into the loss cone as at Earth. ECH waves are particularly intense and extend to higher harmonics within some plasma injection regions. We present results for a survey of over 8 years of Saturn data for fundamental and up to three harmonics of fce, the electron cyclotron frequency.