Revealing the source of Jupiter's x-ray auroral flares

Sci Adv. 2021 Jul 9;7(28):eabf0851. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abf0851. Print 2021 Jul.

Authors

Zhonghua Yao^{1

2}, William R Dunn^{3

4

5}, Emma E Woodfield⁶, George Clark⁷, Barry H Mauk⁷, Robert W Ebert^{8

9}, Denis Grodent¹⁰, Bertrand Bonfond¹⁰, Dongxiao Pan¹¹, I Jonathan Rae¹², Binbin Ni^{13

14}, Ruilong Guo¹⁰, Graziella Branduardi-Raymont³, Affelia D Wibisono^{3

5}, Pedro Rodriguez¹⁵, Stavros Kotsiaros¹⁶, Jan-Uwe Ness¹⁵, Frederic Allegrini^{8

9}, William S Kurth¹⁷, G Randall Gladstone^{8

9}, Ralph Kraft⁴, Ali H Sulaiman¹⁷, Harry Manners¹⁸, Ravindra T Desai¹⁸, Scott J Bolton⁸

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. z.yao@ucl.ac.uk.
² College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, UK.
⁴ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ The Centre for Planetary Science at UCL/Birkbeck, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
⁶ British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK.
⁷ Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, MD, USA.
⁸ Space Science and Engineering Division, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA.
⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA.
¹⁰ Laboratoire de Physique Atmosphérique et Planétaire, STAR institute, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium.
¹¹ Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
¹² Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
¹³ Department of Space Physics, School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
¹⁴ CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, Hefei, Anhui, China.
¹⁵ European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Camino Bajo del Castillo s/n, 28692 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain.
¹⁶ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
¹⁸ Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London, UK.

Abstract

Jupiter's rapidly rotating, strong magnetic field provides a natural laboratory that is key to understanding the dynamics of high-energy plasmas. Spectacular auroral x-ray flares are diagnostic of the most energetic processes governing magnetospheres but seemingly unique to Jupiter. Since their discovery 40 years ago, the processes that produce Jupiter's x-ray flares have remained unknown. Here, we report simultaneous in situ satellite and space-based telescope observations that reveal the processes that produce Jupiter's x-ray flares, showing surprising similarities to terrestrial ion aurora. Planetary-scale electromagnetic waves are observed to modulate electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves, periodically causing heavy ions to precipitate and produce Jupiter's x-ray pulses. Our findings show that ion aurorae share common mechanisms across planetary systems, despite temporal, spatial, and energetic scales varying by orders of magnitude.

Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).