Novel ISR electron temperature technique for heating experiments using
the Arecibo Legacy
Abstract
The Arecibo Observatory (AO) could modify the ionosphere using high
frequency (HF) waves. During the HF experiments, the incoherent scatter
radar (ISR) was used to study the behavior of the ion, plasma, and gyro
lines with 150m height resolution. One year ago, the AO platform
collapsed and put a pause for new experiments. However, the archived ISR
data can answer open questions like the electron heating evolution in
the interaction region. This paper presents a new methodology to
estimate the electron temperature (Te) at the resonance altitude based
on the physics of the HF wave-plasma interaction. Estimating Te inside
regions where the ionospheric plasma interacts with the powerful HF
ground waves is a challenge. Standard ISR techniques to assess the
temperatures using the ion line are based on Maxwellian approximations.
However, the irregularities generated by HF experiments induce
non-Maxwellian behaviors. Therefore, a new approach is proposed using
the ion-acoustic phase velocity (C_ia) of the ion-acoustic waves
generated during the HF experiments. The ion acoustic velocity can be
derived from the ISR enhanced plasma line (HFPL) produced during active
experiments. The HFPL is mainly attributed to the HF wave decaying into
a cascade of Langmuir and ion-acoustic waves, known as Parametric Decay
Instability (PDI). The ion-acoustic waves travel at speed: C_ia=λf_ia,
where f_ia is the ion-acoustic frequency, and λ is the radar (Bragg
backscatter) wavelength. The PDI signature is characterized at the HFPL
by cascaded lines spaced in frequency by multiples of f_ia. After
measuring f_ia, Te is obtained using f_ia=1/λ √(k_B (Te+2Ti)/m_i),
where Ti and mi are the ion temperature and mass. Estimates for one
particular experiment on June 12, 2019 show that Te is usually higher at
the top of the layer and the beginning of every HF pulse. For example,
at 280s after 16:43:00LT, it reached a value near 3500 K, when the
temperature outside of the interaction region was below 1600 K.