All the details of ionospheric disturbances following the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake were first revealed by the high-resolution GPS total electron content observation in Japan. The initial ionospheric disturbance appeared as sudden depletions following small impulsive TEC enhancements ∼7 minutes after the earthquake onset, near the epicenter. Then, concentric waves appeared to propagate in the radial direction with a velocity of 138-3,457 m/s. Zonally-extended enhancements of the TEC also appeared in the west of Japan. In the vicinity of the epicenter, short-period oscillations with a period of ∼4 minutes were observed. This paper focuses on the concentric waves. The concentric pattern indicates that they had a point source. The center of these structures, termed the "ionospheric epicenter", was located about 170 km from the epicenter in the southeast direction. According to the propagation characteristics, these concentric waves could be caused by atmospheric waves classified into three types: acoustic waves generated from a propagating Rayleigh wave, acoustic waves from the ionospheric epicenter, and atmospheric gravity waves from the ionospheric epicenter. The amplitude of the concentric waves was not uniform and was dependent on the azimuth of their propagation direction, which could not be explained by previously-proposed theory.

We present a search at the Jefferson Laboratory for new forces mediated by sub-GeV vector bosons with weak coupling α' to electrons. Such a particle A' can be produced in electron-nucleus fixed-target scattering and then decay to an e + e- pair, producing a narrow resonance in the QED trident spectrum. Using APEX test run data, we searched in the mass range 175-250 MeV, found no evidence for an A'→ e+ e- reaction, and set an upper limit of α'/α ~/= 10(-6). Our findings demonstrate that fixed-target searches can explore a new, wide, and important range of masses and couplings for sub-GeV forces.

Global distribution maps of equatorial spread F (ESF) activity for various annual periods were derived from the topside soundings by the Ionosphere Sounding Satellite b (ISS-b) in 1978-1980. The ESF activity during the northern winter period reveals maximum enhancement at the Atlantic longitudes of large westward geomagnetic declination, and during the northern summer at the Pacific longitudes of large eastward declination. On several orbits passing over the region of the ESF activity enhancement, abrupt depletions of the electron density or equatorial plasma bubbles were observed at the satellite altitude of about 1100 km. It has also been found that the background electron density distributions tend to be symmetric with respect to the magnetic equator in the region of the enhanced ESF activity and asymmetric in the region of the suppressed ESF activity. These observations are taken account of by the influence of a transequatorial thermospheric wind upon the suppression of the Rayleigh-Taylor type plasma instability. 10,903 10,904 MARUYAMA AND MATUURA: ACTIVITY OF ESF AND BUBBLES

Abstract. This paper presents a method to derive the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) and to estimate the biases of GPS satellites and dual frequency receivers using the GPS Earth Observation Network (GEONET) in Japan. Based on the consideration that the TEC is uniform in a small area, the method divides the ionosphere over Japan into 32 meshes. The size of each mesh is 2 • by 2 • in latitude and longitude, respectively. By assuming that the TEC is identical at any point within a given mesh and the biases do not vary within a day, the method arranges unknown TECs and biases with dual GPS data from about 209 receivers in a day unit into a set of equations. Then the TECs and the biases of satellites and receivers were determined by using the leastsquares fitting technique. The performance of the method is examined by applying it to geomagnetically quiet days in various seasons, and then comparing the GPS-derived TEC with ionospheric critical frequencies (foF2). It is found that the biases of GPS satellites and most receivers are very stable. The diurnal and seasonal variation in TEC and foF2 shows a high degree of conformity. The method using a highly dense receiver network like GEONET is not always applicable in other areas. Thus, the paper also proposes a simpler and faster method to estimate a single receiver's bias by using the satellite biases determined from GEONET. The accuracy of the simple method is examined by comparing the receiver biases determined by the two methods. Larger deviation from GEONET derived bias tends to be found in the receivers at lower (<30 • N) latitudes due to the effects of equatorial anomaly.

Linear growth rates for the gravitational Rayleigh‐Taylor instability are calculated using the ionospheric electron density distribution obtained by solving the ion continuity equations including dynamics for O+, NO+, O2+, and N2+ ions. The instability model includes the contributions from plasma away from the magnetic equatorial plane. Effects of the transequatorial component of the thermospheric wind and the E × B drift are investigated. Thermospheric winds are based on theoretical calculations. The E × B drift velocities are modeled after the observations at Jicamarca and Fortaleza for different seasons. The results have shown that both effects are equally important to controlling the occurrence of equatorial spread F. Observed winter‐summer asymmetry of the occurrence probability at the Jicamarca longitude is explained by the characteristics of the E × B drift velocity model. However, in the case of Fortaleza, the observations cannot be explained strictly in terms of the E × B drift. Taking account of the E × B drift effect and the wind effect, we have obtained a qualitative agreement between the observations and calculations over all seasons for both Jicamarca and Fortaleza.