ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN ALFVéN WAVES AND AURORAL RADIO EMISSIONS IN THE JOVIAN SYSTEM
Seminars
Jupiter’s powerful aurorae reflect intense energy dissipation in the magnetosphere–ionosphere system. Recent studies reveal that solar wind compression systematically enhances auroral emission, while the mechanism is not yet fully understood. Alfvén waves were proposed to be responsible for the auroral enhancement, based on the correlation between Alfvénic wave power and ultraviolet auroral intensity revealed by the unprecedented, though limited, observations of Juno and the Hubble Space Telescope. Since auroral energy dissipation produces emissions across multiple frequency bands, we leverage a comprehensive data set of radio emissions from Juno to investigate the relation between Alfvén waves and auroral radiation power. A clear correlation between Alfvén waves and radio emissions was revealed, providing additional supporting evidence for the hypothesis that Alfvén waves contribute to auroral energy dissipation, and the correlation peaked in the region between 40 and 60 RJ, providing key insights to the Alfvénic energy source region in the magnetosphere.
Additional information: Dr. Junjie CHEN, cjjvince@hku.hk
Dr. Chen received her bachelor's degree from Harbin Institute of Technology and doctor's degree from Southern University of Science and Technology. She mainly uses datasets from Juno, Galileo, and Cassini to study the waves and energy dissipation processes in the magnetosphere of giant planets. Her research aims to analyze the intrinsic physical correlations underlying the periodic features observed in multi-instrument data from the magnetospheres of giant planets, thereby understanding the energy transport and dissipation mechanisms in their space environments.