Survey of low-energy plasma electrons in Saturn's magnetosphere - Voyagers 1 and 2

The low energy plasma electron environment within Saturn's magnetosphere was surveyed by the Plasma Science Experiment (PLS) during the Voyager encounters with Saturn. Over the full energy range of the PLS instrument (10 eV to 6 keV) the electron distribution functions are clearly non-Maxwellian in character; they are composed of a cold (thermal) component with Maxwellian shape and a hot (suprathermal) non-Maxwellian component. A large scale positive radial gradient in electron temperature is observed, increasing from less than 1 eV in the inner magnetosphere to as high as 800 eV in the outer magnetosphere. Three fundamentally different plasma regimes were identified from the measurements: (1) the hot outer magnetosphere, (2) the extended plasma sheet, and (3) the inner plasma torus. Previously announced in STAR as N83-34872