Determining meteor composition and ionization efficiency of non-specular meteor trails in the E-region ionosphere

Details Determining meteor composition and ionization efficiency of non-specular meteor trails in the E-region ionosphere Determining meteor composition and ionization efficiency of non-specular meteor trails in the E-region ionosphere

May 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agusmsa41a..24m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2002, abstract #SA41A-24

Physics

2471 Plasma Waves And Instabilities, 6245 Meteors, 6952 Radar Atmospheric Physics

Scientific paper

While meteor trails have been observed for decades using visual and radar techniques, the overall composition and ionization probability for meteor particles have remained poorly constrained. Theoretical determinations of these properties are required for calculations of meteor density, flux, and mass. We have created a model that simulates meteoroid ablation and calculates the ionization probability of the ablated particles. This yields a meteor trail electron density profile at a given altitude, which we then input into a version of a linear kinetic Farley-Buneman gradient drift dispersion relation to test for the stability of the resulting density profile. Given the assumption that an unstable meteor trail results in turbulence and field aligned irregularities, it may be used to predict the altitude and nature of radar-observed non-specular meteor trails. In calculating the density of each ion species, we must determine the ionization probability of the species, β , which is the ratio of electrons produced to the number of vaporized neutral atoms in an ablating meteoroid. Past models aiming to describe β have had difficulty constraining it to fit observational results. By using our model, we can determine a value for β that is more constrained to radar observations of non-specular meteor trails. In addition, our model is sensitive to meteoric composition, so by comparing our simulation results for different compositions of meteors to observational results, we show that it should be possible to detect light meteor ions, and determine the composition and relative abundances of meteoric species based on radar observations of the meteor.

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