Gradient drift instability as a source of spread F in the region of large-scale irregularities in the low-latitude topside ionosphere

Abstract

The expression for the increment of instability and decrement of diffusion damping of gradient drift waves for ionospheric altitudes above the F 2 layer maximum is obtained. The gradient drift instability is used to interpret the observations of spread F in the region of large-scale horizontal irregularities of the electron density. Two types of such irregularities observed on board the Intercosmos-19 (IC-19) satellite in the region of low latitudes (a peak of the density in the dusk ionosphere and a trough of the density in the dawn ionosphere) are considered. It is shown that the observed gradients of the density and electric field values in the dawn and dusk ionospheric sectors are quite sufficient for the instability development criterion to be satisfied in both considered cases.