Determination of Solar EUV Intensity and Ion Flux from Langmuir Probe Current Characteristics

Abstract: This report presents a model to determine the solar Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) intensity and the ion flux in the vicinity of Saturn, by using measurements from the Langmuir probe, a plasma investigation instrument, of the Cassini satellite. The model is based on in situ measurements and does therefore provide an improved estimation of the wanted parameters compared to previously used calculations based only on the EUV flux measured near Earth. The solar EUV and ion flux were determined by analysing and processing the current measurements from the Cassini Langmuir probe in several steps. Initially the time intervals where the measured current were expected to be due only to the photoelectron current was extracted. The photoelectron current is the part of the measured probe current that is only due to electrons ejected from the probe by photons coming from the Sun. The measurements showed a periodic behaviour which was concluded to be due to the attitude of the satellite. This interfering effect was corrected for and the data was then plotted against an EUV index, estimated from a traditionally used proxy of the EUV flux near Earth; the F10.7 solar radio flux index. In agreement with the theory of the photoelectric effect a linear relationship between the EUV flux and the photoelectron current mph was expected. A least square linear fit to the extracted photoelectron current data provided the relation, for the Langmuir probe on Cassini, in the form of the equation mph=0.1842EUV+0.2405, where mph is the photoelectron current in nA and EUV is the EUV index in W/Hzm^2. The derived equation is the result of the study, showing how to estimate the solar EUV flux using the Langmuir probe current measurements. This result was used to derive the other wanted parameter, the ion flux. The derivation was done by calculating the photoelectron current mph at all time and subtracting the result from the total current. The retrieved difference gives the magnitude of the ion current for every measurement.