Magnetospherically reflected, specularly reflected, and backscattered whistler mode radio-sounder echoes observed on the IMAGE satellite: 2. Sounding of electron density, ion effective mass (meff), ion composition (H+, He+, O+), and density irregularities

Abstract

[1] A companion paper by Sonwalkar et al. (2011) provided new details of whistler mode radio sounding of the altitude range below ∼5000 km by the Radio Plasma Imager (RPI) instrument on the IMAGE satellite. That paper presented frequency-vs- group time delay records of echoes whose raypaths either 1) reversed direction through refraction at altitudes above the ionosphere where the wave frequency was approximately equal to the local lower hybrid resonance frequency flh (magnetospherically reflected or MR echoes), or 2) returned to IMAGE from reflection points along the sharp lower boundary of the ionosphere at ∼90 km (obliquely incident (OI) or normally incident (NI) specularly reflected (SR) echoes). The MR and OI echo paths were shown to form narrow loops, while the NI echo followed the same raypath down and back. Furthermore, the echoes were found to be discrete or broadened in time delay either by multipath propagation or by scattering from field aligned irregularities (FAIs). We begin with a direct interpretive approach, employing a combination of refractive index diagrams, ray tracings, and a plasma density model to predict the detailed frequency-vs-time properties of echoes detected when the sounder is operated over a wide range of whistler mode frequencies (typically 6 kHz to 63 kHz) and the satellite is either above or below the altitude of the maximum flh along the geomagnetic field line B0 in the upper ionosphere. We then consider the inverse problem, estimation of the parameters of the prevailing plasma density model from the observed echo properties. Thanks to variations in the sensitivity of the various echo forms to the altitude profiles of electron density and ion effective mass meff, we use the observed frequency-vs- group time delay (tg − f) details of simultaneously received MR and SR echoes to infer the properties of a diffusive equilibrium model of the plasma, including estimates of the ion composition in the important transition region from the O+-dominated ionosphere to the light ion regime above. Our results on electron density and ion composition measurements are in general agreement with those obtained from in situ measurements on the IMAGE and DMSP-F15 satellites, with bottomside sounding results from nearby Ionosondes, and with values obtained from the IRI-2007 model. We also demonstrate a method of estimating the scale sizes and locations of FAIs located along or near WM echo paths.