Neutral particle release from Europa's surface

TL;DR

This study investigates the processes of neutral water molecule release from Europa's icy surface due to space weathering, focusing on ion sputtering, photon-stimulated desorption, and ion backscattering, and estimates their relative contributions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation of water molecule ejection mechanisms on Europa, highlighting the dominant role of ion sputtering by sulfur ions and quantifying escape fractions.

Findings

S+ ions cause the highest sputtered water flux

Photon-stimulated desorption yields are lower than sputtering by ~1.5 orders of magnitude

Ion backscattering is significant only at energies above 1 keV

Abstract

In this paper, we look at space weathering processes on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The heavy energetic ions of the Jovian plasma (H+, O+, S+, C+) can erode the surface of Europa via ion sputtering (IS), ejecting up to 1000 H2O molecules per ion. UV Photons impinging the Europa's surface can also result in neutral atom release via photon-stimulated desorption (PSD) and chemical change (photolysis). In this work, we study the efficiency of the IS and PSD processes for ejecting water molecules, simulating the resulting neutral H2O density. We also estimate the contribution to the total neutral atom release by the Ion Backscattering (IBS) process. Moreover, we estimate the possibility of detecting the sputtered high energy atoms, in order to distinguish the action of the IS process from other surface release mechanisms. Our main results are: 1) The most significant sputtered-particle flux and the largest contribution to the neutral H2O-density come from the incident S+ ions; 2) The H2O density produced via PSD is lower than that due to sputtering by ~1.5 orders of magnitude; 3) In the energy range below 1 keV, the IBS can be considered negligible for the production of neutrals, whereas in the higher energy range it becomes the dominant neutral emission mechanism; 4) the total sputtering rate for Europa is 2.0\cdot 1027 H2O s-1; 5) the fraction of escaping H2O via IS is 22% of the total sputtered population, while the escape fraction for H2O produced by PSD is 30% of the total PSD population. Since the PSD exosphere is lower than the IS one, the major agent for Europa's surface erosion is IS on both the non-illuminated and illuminated side. Lastly, the exospheric neutral density, estimated from the Galileo electron density measurements appears to be higher than that calculated for H2O alone; this favours the scenario of the presence of O2 produced by radiolysis and photolysis.