Stochastics In Circumplanetary Dust Dynamics

Charged dust grains in circumplanetary environments experience, beyond various de- terministic forces, also stochastic perturbations: E.g., fluctuations of the magnetic field, the charge of the grains etc.

Here, we investigate the dynamics of a dust population in a circular orbit around the planet which is perturbed by a stochastic magnetic field B , modeled by an isotropi- cally Gaussian white noise. The resulting perturbation equations give rise to a modi- 2 fied diffusion of the inclinations and eccentricities ­ x D [t +/- sin[2nt]/(2n)] (x - alias for eccentricity e and the inclination i, t - time). The diffusion coefficient is found to be D = [G]2/n, where the gyrofrequency and the orbital frequency are denoted by G, and n, respectively.

This behavior has been checked by numerical experiments. We have chosen dust grains (1µm in radius) initially moving in circular orbits around a planet (Jupiter) and integrated numerically their trajectories over their typical lifetimes (100 years). The particles were exposed to a Gaussian fluctuating magnetic field B obeying the same statistical properties as in the analytical treatment. In this case, the theoretical 2 findings have been confirmed according to x D t with a diffusion coefficient of D G/n. 2

The theoretical studies showed the statistical properties of B being of decisive im- portance. To this aim, we analyzed the magnetic field data measured by the Galileo magnetometer at Jupiter and found almost Gaussian fluctuations of about 5 % of the mean field and exponentially decaying correlations. This results in a diffusion in the space of orbital elements of at least 1...5 % (variations of inclinations and eccentric- ity) over the lifetime of the dust grains. For smaller dusty motes stochastics might well dominate the dynamics.