Study of the effect of a longitudinal magnetic field on streamer properties following Juno’s observation of possible transient luminous events on Jupiter

Giles et al. [J. Geophys. Res., 125, e2020JE006659, 2020] reported the first observation of possible lightning-induced transient luminous events (TLEs) at ~250 km altitude in Jupiter’s ionosphere by the Juno spacecraft. Whereas TLEs on Jupiter were predicted by Yair et al. [J. Geophys. Res., 114, E09002, 2009], the modeling of sprite streamers, which are the brightest TLE, on Jupiter is absent from the literature. Here we demonstrate that due to Jupiter’s strong magnetic field [Connerney et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 45, 2590-2596, 2018] ionospheric electrons at the altitude mentioned above are magnetized. Subsequently, we discuss the effect of magnetic field on the electron energy distribution function, and use BOLSIG+ [Hagelaar and Pitchford, Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. 14, 722-733, 2005] to account for this effect on electron transport coefficients and electron-neutral collisional rates. We also study the photoionization process, which is necessary for inception of positive streamers, in a low pressure 88% H₂, 12% helium mixture. Streamer initiation and propagation in Jupiter’s atmosphere is studied using a plasma fluid model. Specifically, the self-focusing effect of streamers reported in [Starikovskiy et al., Phys. Rev. E, 103, 063201, 2021] is reproduced. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that presence of the magnetic field increases the emission intensity of the streamer by an order of magnitude.