Abstract
Releasing plasma cloud is an efficient way to manage ionosphere properties. In this paper, we establish a three-dimensional fluid model to simulate the spatiotemporal evolution of released Cs plasma. Four types of particles are taken into account: released neutral Cs, ambient O, Cs+ and electron, among which the Cs+ and electron move according to the classical ambipolar diffusion. Meanwhile, photoionization induced by solar radiation and recombination of Cs+/electron are included in model as two chemical reactions. Based on this model, we investigate the influence of three factors: initial velocity of neutral Cs cloud, photoionization rate and altitude. The initial velocity can change the whole distribution of plasma cloud. When there is no velocity or velocity along the background magnetic field, the plasma cloud shows an ellipsoid shape and moves with neutral cloud. If the velocity is perpendicular to the magnetic field line, the cloud will be stretched in the same direction and does not move. We investigate the influence of photoionization rate under different initial velocities, and find that with the photoionization rate increasing, more and more particles remain in the initial release position. Moreover, the altitude affects the density of ambient O and temperature result in the diffusion coefficient and drifting velocity reducing and then the size of bulk plasma inclines to be reduced at lower altitude.
Highlights
Active release of plasma cloud in the ionosphere is an efficient method to change some characteristics of the ionosphere, such as plasma density, electromagnetic field etc
The initial velocity is very important, since it can change the shape of the plasma cloud dramatically
We consider four conditions: no initial velocity, velocity of 5 km/s that is parallel to magnetic field, velocity of 5 km/s that is perpendicular to magnetic field and velocity of 5 km/s at 45◦ to magnetic field
Summary
Active release of plasma cloud in the ionosphere is an efficient method to change some characteristics of the ionosphere, such as plasma density, electromagnetic field etc. Schunk studied a short time (∼10s) plasma cloud expansion Their model takes account of electrostatic potential, stress tensor, different kinds of collisions and so on. Hastings considered different ambient factors in their three-dimensional model They studied effect of central density of neutrals and ions which is related to perturbation potential, effect of the coupling of the lower E and upper F region, and effect of release altitude. What’s more, Xie et al. presented a three-dimensional and two-species MHD model to study the behaviors of Ba releasing, and discussed the reaction of the ambient plasma environment Those studies usually concentrate on relative short time and interior progress of the plasma expansion. We establish a three-dimensional fluid model to simulate a relative long time (1800s) expansion after Cs release Based on this model, the influence of different release velocity, photoionization rate and release altitude is investigated.
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