Abstract
Incoherent scatter radars (ISR) estimate the electron and ion
temperatures in the ionosphere by fitting measured spectra of
ion-acoustic waves to forward models. For radars looking at aspect
angles within 5° of perpendicular to the Earth’s magnetic field, the
magnetic field constrains electron movement and Coulomb collisions add
an additional source of damping that narrows the spectra. Fitting the
collisionally narrowed spectra to collisionless forward models leads to
errors or underestimates of the plasma temperatures. This paper presents
the first fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of ISR spectra with
collisional damping by velocity dependent electron-electron and
electron-ion collisions. For aspect angles between 0.5° and 2° off
perpendicular, the damping effects of electron-ion and electron-electron
collisions are the same and the resulting spectra are narrower than what
current theories predict. For aspect angles larger than 3° away from
perpendicular, the simulations with electron-ion collisions match
collisionless ISR theory well, but spectra with electron-electron
collisions are narrower than theory predicts at aspect angles as large
as 5° away from perpendicular. At all aspect angles the particle-in-cell
simulations produce narrower spectra than previous simulations using
single particle displacement statistics. The narrowing of spectra by
electron-electron collisions between 3° and 5° away from perpendicular
is currently neglected when fitting measured spectra from the Jicamarca
and Millstone Hill radars, leading to underestimates of electron
temperatures by as much as 50% at these radars.