Sourcing energized electrons in the Io-Jupiter flux tube via Alfven waves

We use a self-consistent two-dimensional hybrid gyrofluid-kinetic electron (GKE) model to simulate the propagation of Alfvén wave energy along a Jovian flux tube and examine the resulting wave-electron interactions. At high latitudes, the interaction of electrons with inertial Alfvén waves manifests as highly field-aligned broadband electron beams (e.g. Damiano et al., 2019) that are bidirectional in nature. While precipitating energized electrons can be a cause of auroral emissions, the propagation of some energized electrons back towards the torus can be a source of suprathermal electrons critical to the torus energy balance (Bagenal and Delamere, 2011) and the torus physical chemistry (Coffin et al, 2020). Additionally, this propagation may be a source of the observed trans-hemispheric beams (as proposed by Bonfond et al., 2008). In this presentation, we investigate how the characteristics of wave energy transmission and electron energization vary as functions of model input parameters, such as the Alfvén Mach number, and discuss the results in the context of the torus energy budget (e.g. Hess et al., 2011) .