Modeling of the Farley-Buneman instability in the E-region ionosphere: a new hybrid approach

Abstract

Abstract.A novel approach to nonlinear simulations of the Farley-Buneman (FB) instability in the E-region ionosphere is developed. The mathematical model includes a fluid description of electrons and a simplified kinetic description of ions based on a kinetic equation with the Bhatnagar-GrossCrook (BGK) collision term. This hybrid model takes into account all major factors crucial for development and nonlinear stabilization of the instability (collisional drag forces, ion inertia and Landau damping, dominant electron nonlinearity, etc.). At the same time, these simulations are free of noises caused by the finite number of particles and may require less computer resources than particle-in-cell (PIC) or hybridsemi-fluid semi-PIC -simulations. First results of 2-D simulations are presented which agree reasonably well with those of previous 2-D PIC simulations. One of the potentially useful applications of the novel computational approach is modeling of the FB instability not far from its threshold.

Neutral atmosphere temperature trends and variability at 90 km, 70 °N, 19 °E, 2003–2014

“…The minimum altitude at which this occurs depends on the trail altitude, density gradient and latitude, and at high latitudes this altitude is ∼ 95 km. Therefore, using ambipolar diffusion rates to calculate trail altitudes above this minimum altitude may lead to errors of several kilometres, since the diffusion coefficients derived from the measurements are underestimated (Ballinger et al, 2008;Dyrud et al, 2001;Kovalev et al, 2008).…”

Numerical study on the stability of weakly collisional plasma in E×B fields

“…[15][16][17] However, due to the exponential decrease of neutral particle density in the ionosphere, one can find low collisional conditions in the upper part of the ionospheric Eregion or in F-region. Similar conditions can also be set in experimental devices (e.g., discharges at low pressure).…”

“…There have been a number of numerical studies in 2-D and 3-D, but most of them focused on the highly collisional regime, and many considered, just as in theoretical works, the relative drift speeds between plasma species. [15][16][17] In the view of previous works, the question arises if there is any unstable regime for perfectly magnetized and weakly collisional plasmas in E Â B fields. In such systems, it is necessary to distinguish between different collisional a) Electronic mail: miroslav.horky@fel.cvut.cz 1070-664X/2015/22(2)/022109/8/$30.00 V C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC 22, 022109-1 mechanisms, where elastic and inelastic collisions can each have different effects on the velocity phase-space of the plasma in question.…”

Phase speed saturation of Farley‐Buneman waves due to stochastic, self‐induced fluctuations in the background flow

“…In this plot, the black line represents the start of the time interval considered used in our analysis. This interval was chosen because the ion velocity data suggest that the saturation process had already peaked and the system was at the turbulent regime [ Kovalev et al , ]. The ξ ( t ) time series was calculated from , where is a smoothing polynomial that models the trend in the velocity data.…”