Neutral particle release from Europa's surface
C. Plainaki, A. Milillo, A. Mura, S. Orsini, T. Cassidy

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…
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