Plasmoids and Dipolarizations in the Jovian Magnetotail: Statistical Survey of Ion Acceleration with Juno Observations

Jupiter’s magnetosphere provides a unique natural laboratory to study processes of energy transport and transformation. Strong electric fields in spatially confined structures such as plasmoids and dipolarizations can be responsible for ion acceleration to high energies. We focus on the effectiveness of ion energization and acceleration in plasmoids and dipolarizations. Therefore, we present a statistical study of plasmoid and dipolarization structures in the predawn magnetotail, which were identified in the magnetometer data of the Juno spacecraft from 2016 to 2018. For our study we additionally use the energetic particle observations from the Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument (JEDI) which discriminates between different ion species. We find significant heavy ion acceleration in plasmoids close to the current sheet center which is in line with the previous statistical results on acceleration in plasmoids based on Galileo observations conducted by Kronberg et al. (2019). Furthermore, we investigate if non-adiabatic acceleration of ions is present in dipolarizations and if the acceleration process is related to electromagnetic fluctuations.