The electric fields and the floating potentials of a Plasma Diagnostics Payload (PDP) located near a powerful electron beam injected from a large sounding rocket into the auroral zone ionosphere have been studied. As the PDP drifted away from the beam laterally, it surveyed a region of hot plasma extending nearly to 60 m radius. Large polarization electric fields transverse to B were imbedded in this hot plasma, which displayed large ELF wave variations and also an average pattern which has led to a model of the plasma flow about the negative line potential of the beam resembling a hydrodynamic vortex in a uniform flow field. Most of the present results are derived from the ECHO 6 sounding rocket mission.
Plasma heating, electric fields and plasma flow by electron beam ionospheric injection
Advances in Space Research ; 10 , 7 19
1990-01-01
Miscellaneous
No indication
English
Heating of the high-latitude ionospheric plasma by electric fields
Online Contents | 1997
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