A dust-driven flux tube interchange instability

We describe, formulate, and investigate quantitatively a physical process which will lead to radial plasma transport in dusty planetary magnetospheres. The process depends on plasma inhomogeneities (in particular electron temperature fluctuations) interacting with distributed fine-grained ring material to drive currents along the magnetic field lines, which close through the ionosphere. Azimuthal electric fields generated in this way will then lead to radial plasma flows via the E x B drift. The process is investigated both for Saturn's oxygen torus and for the Io torus in Jupiter's magnetosphere.