Abstract
Electrostatic electron cyclotron waves (ECWs), also‐called electron Bernstein waves, observed at harmonics nfc of the electron cyclotron frequency fc were transmitted over field‐aligned emitter‐receiver separations of hundreds of meters in the active rocket experiment OEDIPUS‐C. Although the 300‐μs rectangular current pulses into the emitting antenna were smoothly maintained during the experiment, the resulting ECW pulses at the receiver exhibited considerable variety in both the time and frequency domains. A full hot‐plasma dispersion relation has been applied to ray‐tracing investigations to identify the rays that could connect the emitter and receiver in a smoothly varying model of the auroral ionospheric magnetoplasma. Theoretical connecting rays were limited to frequencies extending from 1 to a few kilohertz above 2fc, which was about 2.6 MHz. But the observed pulse spectra extended over a much broader bandwidth, from several kilohertz below nfc to several kilohertz above, for n = 2, 3, and 4. The broadening is interpreted as a consequence of Doppler effect caused by payload motion and backscatter of the ECWs. Field‐aligned density irregularities typical of the auroral topside ionosphere or waves nonlinearly induced by the intense near fields of the HEX antenna may act as the scatterers.
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