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The Effect Of The Gradient-Drift Term On Type I Electrojet Irregularities, D. T. Farley, Bela G. Fejer Jan 1975

The Effect Of The Gradient-Drift Term On Type I Electrojet Irregularities, D. T. Farley, Bela G. Fejer

Bela G. Fejer

We hypothesize that type 1 VHF radar echoes can only be observed when the electrojet plasma is linearly unstable at half the radar wavelength and that further, for reasons not yet understood, the phase velocity of the unstable waves always corresponds to the threshold conditions for instability, even when the destabilizing forces (electron drift and plasma density gradient) exceed the threshold. This phase velocity, which produces the Doppler shift of the radar echoes, is usually close to the ion acoustic velocity of the medium but can differ from it to some extent because of the effect of the density gradient. …