Alternating emission features in Io's footprint tail: Magnetohydrodynamical simulations of possible causes

TL;DR

This study uses magnetohydrodynamic simulations to explore the causes of alternating emission features in Io's footprint tail, highlighting the Hall effect as a key factor in breaking symmetry and creating observed substructures.

Contribution

The paper identifies the Hall effect in Io's ionosphere as the primary mechanism behind the alternating emission spots in Io's footprint tail, supported by MHD simulations.

Findings

Hall effect causes asymmetry in Io's footprint tail

Travel time differences enhance the Hall effect's impact

Atmospheric inhomogeneities are not significant contributors

Abstract

Io's movement relative to the plasma in Jupiter's magnetosphere creates Alfv\'en waves propagating along the magnetic field lines which are partially reflected along their path. These waves are the root cause for auroral emission, which is subdivided into the Io Footprint (IFP), its tail and leading spot. New observations of the Juno spacecraft by Mura et al. (2018) have shown puzzling substructure of the footprint and its tail. In these observations, the symmetry between the poleward and equatorward part of the footprint tail is broken and the tail spots are alternatingly displaced. We show that the location of these bright spots in the tail are consistent with Alfv\'en waves reflected at the boundary of the Io torus and Jupiter's ionosphere. Then, we investigate three different mechanisms to explain this phenomenon: (1) The Hall effect in Io's ionosphere, (2) travel time differences of Alfv\'en waves between Io's Jupiter facing and its opposing side and (3) asymmetries in Io's atmosphere. For that, we use magnetohydrodynamic simulations within an idealized geometry of the system. We use the Poynting flux near the Jovian ionosphere as a proxy for the morphology of the generated footprint and its tail. We find that the Hall effect is the most important mechanism under consideration to break the symmetry causing the "Alternating Alfv\'en spot street". The travel time differences contributes to enhance this effect. We find no evidence that the inhomogeneities in Io's atmosphere contribute significantly to the location or shape of the tail spots.