Laboratory studies of spectral features of stimulated electromagnetic emission during the ionospheric heating experiments

Abstract

We present the results of laboratory studies of the formation of a number of spectral components of stimulated electromagnetic emission, which are related to the excitation of small-scale irregularities in the heated ionosphere. In the laboratory experiment, the small-scale irregularity was formed as a result of thermal self-channeling of short-wavelength quasielectrostatic oscillations in a magnetoplasma. Using the method of probing waves, it is experimentally shown that the trapping and waveguide propagation in a small-scale plasma irregularity are exclusively due to Langmuir waves, whereas the upper-hybrid waves with anomalous dispersion are not trapped into the irregularity. It is found that satellites shifted by about 1–2 MHz from the carrier frequency (700 MHz under the experimental conditions) are formed in the Langmuir wave spectrum during the thermal self-channeling. Two mechanisms of generation of spectral satellites have been detected. The first (dynamic) mechanism is observed during the formation of a small-scale irregularity with rapidly increasing longitudinal size. In this case, one low-frequency satellite is excited in the trapped-wave spectrum. The mechanism of the formation of this satellite is apparently related to the Doppler shift of the frequency of the Langmuir waves trapped inside the irregularity. The second (stationary) mechanism is observed in the case of a developed irregularity where its shape is close to cylindrical. In this regime, the trapped-wave spectrum has two symmetric spectral satellites, namely, high- and low-frequency ones. It may be hypothesized that the generation of these satellites is due to scattering of trapped Langmuir waves from drift oscillations of the irregularity.