Energy distributions of precipitating electrons in Jupiter's auroral regions from combined Juno/JADE and Juno/JEDI measurements

Abstract

Jupiter's auroras are produced by magnetospheric electrons precipitating into its atmosphere. Juno/JADE and Juno/JEDI together measure these electrons from 100 eV to 1 MeV. However, their auroral spectra are poorly reproduced by the widely used kappa distribution, hereafter the classical single-kappa distribution. We aim to statistically characterize the energy flux distributions of precipitating auroral electrons and to derive a new phenomenological 4-kappa distribution better suited to JADE+JEDI data. We build mean energy flux distributions in six auroral sub-regions (polar, main, and outer emissions in both hemispheres), combining JADE and JEDI data from PJ3 to PJ35, mapped to the SIII frame with the JRM33 model including the current sheet. We fit them using MCMC with the classical single-kappa and 4-kappa distributions. The mean distributions show a monotonic power-law decay with an energy cutoff beyond ~500 keV in most sub-regions, although some individual spectra depart from it at intermediate energies. Mean energies range from ~21 to ~119 keV, and energy fluxes from ~9.5 to ~28.7 mW/m$^2$. The classical single-kappa fit fails in all sub-regions, with $κ$ converging to the lower bound of its prior range. We therefore introduce the 4-kappa distribution, a linear combination of four classical single-kappa distributions modulated by an exponential high-energy cutoff, which accurately fits all six sub-regions. At equal energy flux and mean energy, transport simulations show that the 4-kappa distribution deposits energy at lower altitude than the classical one and distributes it differently along the vertical, with implications for the UV color ratio, atmospheric chemistry and thermal structure, and ionospheric conductances. This distribution provides an analytical framework for realistic modeling of electron precipitation and UV auroral emissions at Jupiter.