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Novel ISR electron temperature technique for heating experiments using the Arecibo Legacy
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  • Eliana Nossa,
  • Paul Bernhardt,
  • Stanley Briczinski,
  • Michael Sulzer,
  • Phil Perillat,
  • Nestor Aponte
Eliana Nossa
US Naval Research Laboratory

Corresponding Author:eliana.nossagonzalez.ctr.co@nrl.navy.mil

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Paul Bernhardt
Naval Research Laboratory
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Stanley Briczinski
Naval Research Laboratory
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Michael Sulzer
Arecibo Observatory
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Phil Perillat
Arecibo Observatory
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Nestor Aponte
MIT Haystack Observatory
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Abstract

The Arecibo Observatory (AO) could modify the ionosphere using high frequency (HF) waves. During the HF experiments, the incoherent scatter radar (ISR) was used to study the behavior of the ion, plasma, and gyro lines with 150m height resolution. One year ago, the AO platform collapsed and put a pause for new experiments. However, the archived ISR data can answer open questions like the electron heating evolution in the interaction region. This paper presents a new methodology to estimate the electron temperature (Te) at the resonance altitude based on the physics of the HF wave-plasma interaction. Estimating Te inside regions where the ionospheric plasma interacts with the powerful HF ground waves is a challenge. Standard ISR techniques to assess the temperatures using the ion line are based on Maxwellian approximations. However, the irregularities generated by HF experiments induce non-Maxwellian behaviors. Therefore, a new approach is proposed using the ion-acoustic phase velocity (C_ia) of the ion-acoustic waves generated during the HF experiments. The ion acoustic velocity can be derived from the ISR enhanced plasma line (HFPL) produced during active experiments. The HFPL is mainly attributed to the HF wave decaying into a cascade of Langmuir and ion-acoustic waves, known as Parametric Decay Instability (PDI). The ion-acoustic waves travel at speed: C_ia=λf_ia, where f_ia is the ion-acoustic frequency, and λ is the radar (Bragg backscatter) wavelength. The PDI signature is characterized at the HFPL by cascaded lines spaced in frequency by multiples of f_ia. After measuring f_ia, Te is obtained using f_ia=1/λ √(k_B (Te+2Ti)/m_i), where Ti and mi are the ion temperature and mass. Estimates for one particular experiment on June 12, 2019 show that Te is usually higher at the top of the layer and the beginning of every HF pulse. For example, at 280s after 16:43:00LT, it reached a value near 3500 K, when the temperature outside of the interaction region was below 1600 K.