Saturn's Ionospheric Clock(s): A Concept for Generating and Maintaining Saturn's Observed Magnetospheric Periodicities

Saturn’s 10.X hour periodicity, observed throughout the magnetosphere, remains a mystery. It has been observed in many regions, modulating many phenomena. During the Cassini mission most observations have shown a period at about 10.8 hours, expressed in Saturn kilometric radiation from the high latitude auroral zone, in magnetic field components (both equatorial and high latitude) from 3 to 12 Rs, in current sheet encounters in the outer magnetosphere and magnetotail, in energetic neutral atom emission from the equatorial magnetosphere, and in plasma and energetic particles throughout the magnetosphere. More recently, various authors have shown at least two dominant periods expressed (in SKR and in magnetic field components), with slightly different values in the southern and northern hemispheres. The cause of this behavior is still not accounted for. Although loosely associated with Saturn’s rotation, the variability in the period precludes a direct connection with Saturn’s interior (e.g., a magnetic anomaly). Other candidates that have been discussed by others are an ionospheric source (conductivity anomaly), a perturbation in the cold plasma circulation pattern, a magnetospheric cam, asymmetric ring current particle pressure, and/or a natural frequency of the magnetosphere (cavity mode or traveling wave front of some sort). In this paper we present a concept that derives its energy from the subcorotating cold, dense plasma (which exhibits a rotation period on the order of 13 to 14 hours throughout L-shells between ~3 and 20), but is triggered by a process linked with the ionosphere. Key components of the model include significant slippage between the ionosphere and the magnetosphere (with the ionosphere rotating at the expressed period in each hemisphere, only slightly more slowly than the planet interior), subcorotating cold dense plasma with a source in the inner magnetosphere, predominantly radial transport of the cold dense plasma in the rotational frame of the cold plasma, and the episodic release of plasma, primarily from the night side outer magnetosphere, when a critical loading criterion has been reached. For one dominant ionospheric driver, the cartoon in the figure describes the behavior of the cold plasma.