The thresholds of ionospheric plasma instabilities pumped by high-frequency radio waves at EISCAT

Bryers, Carl and Kosch, Michael and Senior, Andrew and Rietveld, M. T. and Yeoman, T. K. (2013) The thresholds of ionospheric plasma instabilities pumped by high-frequency radio waves at EISCAT. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 118 (11). pp. 7472-7481. ISSN 2169-9402

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Abstract

We test the existing theories regarding the thresholds for the parametric decay instability (PDI), the oscillating two-steam instability (OTSI), and the thermal parametric instability (TPI) using the European Incoherent Scatter (EISCAT) facility's ionospheric heater. In these processes, the pump wave can couple to various electrostatic waves in the F layer ionosphere, which can be observed using the EISCAT UHF radar (PDI and OTSI) or by HF radar (TPI). On 19 October 2012, the heater power was stepped from ∼0.5 MW to ∼100 MW effective radiated power in seven steps using a 1 min on, 1 min off cycle. We use an electric field model, taking into account D region absorption, to compare theory with our observations. In all three cases, we find good agreement. In addition, the growth of striations formed during the TPI causes anomalous absorption of the heater wave, which we observe as decreased UHF ion line and plasma line backscatter power. We show evidence that heating for a prolonged period of time reduces the UHF ion line intensity throughout the experiment.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Additional Information:
© 2013 The Authors. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics published by Wiley on behalf of American Geophysical Union This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subjects:
?? ionosphereheating instabilities ??
ID Code:
67972
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
11 Dec 2013 10:23
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
01 Feb 2024 00:29