Three‐dimensional modeling of lightning‐induced electromagnetic pulses on Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn

Abstract

While lightning activity in Venus is still controversial, its existence in Jupiter and Saturn was first detected by the Voyager missions and later on confirmed by Cassini and New Horizons optical recordings in the case of Jupiter, and recently by Cassini on Saturn in 2009. Based on a recently developed 3‐D model, we investigate the influence of lightning‐emitted electromagnetic pulses on the upper atmosphere of Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter. We explore how different lightning properties such as total energy released and orientation (vertical, horizontal, and oblique) can produce mesospheric transient optical emissions of different shapes, sizes, and intensities. Moreover, we show that the relatively strong background magnetic field of Saturn can enhance the lightning‐induced quasi‐electrostatic and inductive electric field components above 1000 km of altitude producing stronger transient optical emissions that could be detected from orbital probes.

Possible Transient Luminous Events Observed in Jupiter's Upper Atmosphere

“…(2014) estimated that for Jupiter the peak photon density for elves would be at an altitude of 250–300 km, and Pérez‐Invernón et al. (2017) found that the width of elves in Jupiter's atmosphere could be between ∼400 km for horizontal discharge and ∼800 km for vertical discharge. For both sprites and elves, the characteristic decay times can vary from submillisecond to several milliseconds, depending on the parameters used in the model (Dubrovin et al., 2014; Luque et al., 2014).…”

Exoplanet Clouds

“…Possible extrasolar lightning tracer are chemical species like HCN and C2H (Rimmer & Helling 2016;Hodosán et al 2016b;Ardaseva et al 2017), or spectral peculiarities like lightning modulated coherent cyclotron emission coming from electrons that are accelerated by the planet's magnetic field (Vorgul & Helling 2016;Helling & Vorgul 2017) similar to the lightning modulated cosmic ray air showers recently discovered on Earth (Schellart et al 2015;Trinh et al 2017). Moreover, strong large-scale magnetic fields like on Saturn (or Brown Dwarfs) enhance lightning-induced electric fields producing strong transient optical emission as demonstrated for Earth (Pérez-Invernón et al 2017). As lightning requires the presence of clouds, lightning indicators are formidable tool to prove the presence of clouds in exoplanet atmosphere as well as gaining insight into the atmospheric dynamics.…”

Spectroscopic Diagnostic of Halos and Elves Detected From Space‐Based Photometers

“…As in the model of halos, we can choose the characteristics of the lightning discharge that produces the elve. The details of this elve model can be found in Inan et al (), Taranenko et al (), Kuo et al (), Marshall et al (), Inan and Marshall (), Luque et al (), Marshall et al (), Pérez‐Invernón et al (), Liu et al (), and Pérez‐Invernón et al ().…”