Fig. 5: A schematic diagram illustrating the formation of the slot region near Europa within the closely connected system of Jupiter and its moons.

Injected hot electrons due to interchange instability exhibit anisotropic pitch angle distributions, which provide the free energy necessary to excite whistler-mode waves within Jupiter’s magnetosphere. Material-driven losses at Europa’s orbit (such as moon absorption process, or loss by neural torus) will deplete electrons with low equatorial pitch angles to enhance electron anisotropies, leading to the generation of more intense whistler-mode waves. These increased waves efficiently scatter energetic electrons into Jupiter’s atmosphere, playing a dominant role in forming the electron slot region near Europa’s orbit and producing diffuse aurora. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.