Empirical modeling of plasma clouds produced by the Metal Oxide Space Clouds experiment

Abstract

The Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) Long-Range Tracking And Instrumentation Radar (ALTAIR) radar at Kwajalein Atoll was used in incoherent scatter mode to measure plasma densities within two artificial clouds created by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Metal Oxide Space Clouds (MOSC) experiment in May 2013. Optical imager, ionosonde, and ALTAIR measurements were combined to create 3-D empirical descriptions of the plasma clouds as a function of time, which match the radar measurements to within 15%. The plasma clouds closely track the location of the optical clouds, and the best fit plasma cloud widths are generally consistent with isotropic neutral diffusion. Cloud plasma densities decreased as a power of time, with exponents between −0.5 and −1.0, or much more slowly than the −1.5 predicted by diffusion. These exponents and estimates of total ion number from integration through the model volume are consistent with a scenario of slow ionization and a gradually increasing total number of ions with time, reaching a net ionization fraction of 20% after approximately half an hour. These robust representations of the plasma density are being used to study impacts of the artificial clouds on the dynamics of the background ionosphere and on RF propagation.