Abstract
Abstract. A novel approach to nonlinear simulations of the Farley-Buneman (FB) instability in the E-region ionosphere is developed. The mathematical model includes a fluid description of electrons and a simplified kinetic description of ions based on a kinetic equation with the Bhatnagar-Gross-Crook (BGK) collision term. This hybrid model takes into account all major factors crucial for development and nonlinear stabilization of the instability (collisional drag forces, ion inertia and Landau damping, dominant electron nonlinearity, etc.). At the same time, these simulations are free of noises caused by the finite number of particles and may require less computer resources than particle-in-cell (PIC) or hybrid – semi-fluid semi-PIC – simulations. First results of 2-D simulations are presented which agree reasonably well with those of previous 2-D PIC simulations. One of the potentially useful applications of the novel computational approach is modeling of the FB instability not far from its threshold.
Highlights
The Farley-Buneman (FB) instability is a low-frequency plasma instability driven by a sufficiently strong quasistationary electric field E0 perpendicular to the geomagnetic field B0
Low-frequency and low-current plasma processes in the E-region ionosphere result in insignificant magnetic field variations. This means that these processes have an electrostatic nature and the turbulent electric field can be adequately described by an electrostatic potential, E=−∇
V e,⊥ are the components of the electron fluid velocities, δ is the fluctuating electrostatic potential, E0 is the ambient electric field which is practically perpendicular to the geomagnetic field B0, V 0=cE0×b/B0 is the E0×B drift velocity, bis the unit vector along B0, and the ‘nabla’ operators ∇,⊥ pertain to the coordinates parallel and perpendicular to B0 respectively
Summary
The Farley-Buneman (FB) instability is a low-frequency plasma instability driven by a sufficiently strong quasistationary electric field E0 perpendicular to the geomagnetic field B0. Numerical studies of wave activity have been mostly limited to 2-D cases: either in the plane parallel to the magnetic field (Machida and Goertz, 1988; Schlegel and Thiemann, 1994) or in the perpendicular plane (Newman and Ott, 1981; Janhunen, 1994; Oppenheim et al, 1996; Oppenheim and Dimant, 2004; Dyrud et al, 2006; Oppenheim et al, 2008) The latter simulations are more relevant to the actual situation because they correctly take into account the dominant electron nonlinearity associated with the fluid-model term ∝δE×∇δne, where δE and δne are the turbulent electric field and electron density perturbations, respectively.
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