Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Oppenheim, Meers
• Otani, Niels
• Ronchi, Corrado

Titel

Hybrid simulations of the saturated Farley-Buneman instability in the ionosphere

Ist Teil von

• Geophysical research letters, 1995-02, Vol.22 (4), p.353-356

Ort / Verlag

Legacy CDMS: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

1995

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Numerical simulations of the Farley-Buneman instability in 2-1/2 dimensions using particle ions and fluid electrons show the growth, saturation and nonlinear behavior of two-stream waves. This hybrid technique models the saturated state of the instability for a much longer period of time than the pure particle codes that preceded it. While focusing principally on modeling the topside E region equatorial electrojet, many of these results apply to the auroral two-stream instability as well. The following features are seen in all our hybrid simulations: (1) wave growth at an angle offset from the electron drift direction where the angle depends on the strength of the driving electric field, (2) nonlinear coupling to waves traveling perpendicular to the propagation direction of the principal two-stream waves, (3) a saturated wave phase velocity at or above the sound speed but well below the velocity predicted by linear theory and (4) phase velocities which remain almost constant as a simulated radar sweeps from a horizontal direction to nearly vertical. The nonlinear electron motion dominates the behavior of these waves. Further, these simulations indicate that ion kinetic effects are not essential for the saturation of the instability and that electron temperature effects have a minor impact on the final saturated state.