Observation of suprathermal electron fluxes during ionospheric modification experiments

Abstract

The temporal behavior of backscatter by ionospheric Langmuir waves was observed with the 430‐MHz radar at Arecibo while a powerful HF wave was cycled 2 s on, 3 s off. The time resolution was 0.1 s. Late at night, in the absence of photoelectrons, using an HF equivalent radiated power of 80 MW at 3.175 MHz, the initial enhancement of about 6% above system noise of the backscattered power with Doppler shifts between −3.75 and −3.85 MHz was reached about 0.25 s after switching on the HF transmitter. In the following second the enhancement gradually decreased to about 3% and remained there until switching off. During the late afternoon, in the presence of photoelectrons, using the same HF power at 5.1 MHz, an initial enhancement by 25% of the backscattered power with Doppler shifts between −5.25 and −5.35 MHz appeared within less than 0.1 s after switching on the HF transmitter. The incoherent backscatter by Langmuir waves enhanced by photoelectrons was already above system noise by a factor greatly in excess of 10 before switching on the HF transmitter; the 25% enhancement thus corresponds to an enhancement greatly in excess of 250% above system noise. The enhancement drops to less than one tenth of its original value in less than a second. The nighttime effect is attributed to multiple acceleration of electrons from the high‐energy tail of the Maxwellian distribution. The daytime effect is believed to be due to a modification in the distribution function of photoelectrons.