The plasma interaction of Saturn's moon Titan: Modelling the dynamics of the ionosphere and the emission of energetic neutral atoms

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The purpose of this project is to analyze the interaction between the ionosphere of Saturn’s largest moon Titan and the corotating plasma in the giant planet’s magnetosphere by applying a hybrid simulation code (kinetic ions, fluid electrons). In the first part, we plan to incorporate realistic ionospheric chemistry into an existing hybrid model of Titan’s plasma environment. So far, a sophisticated description of Titan’s ionosphere has not been possible within the framework of the hybrid approach, mainly due to the coarse grid resolution achieved by these codes. We overcome this problem by means of a recently developed, spatially adaptive hybrid code that is fully parallelized. The expanded hybrid code will then be applied to study plasma and magnetic field data from recent Cassini flybys during which the spacecraft passed deep into Titan’s ionosphere. In contrast to any other existing model of Titan’s magnetospheric environment, the modified hybrid code will be able to simultaneously describe large-scale asymmetries of the interaction due to finite ion gyroradii and small-scale processes in the moon’s ionosphere. In the second part, we will further expand this code to develop a self-consistent model for the emission of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) from Titan’s atmosphere. Based on this model, we plan to support the analysis of data from the Ion and Neutral Camera (INCA) aboard Cassini, providing snapshots of the global plasma and magnetic field configuration near Titan.