Velocity shear and fluctuations in the auroral regions of the ionosphere

Physics

Scientific paper

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Auroral Zones, F Region, Flow Velocity, Electron Scattering, Electrostatic Waves, Field Aligned Currents, Ion Currents, Ionized Gases, Velocity Distribution

Scientific paper

The theory of collisional electrostatic modes that are driven unstable by a sheared field-aligned ion flow velocity is presented. The linearly unstable modes can account for fluctuations with transverse wavelengths ranging from a kilometer to several meters for only a moderate amount of shear in the parallel velocity, thus providing a direct means of exciting almost the entire range of the observed subkilometer-scale irregularities in the auroral F region. A quasi-linear analysis is presented showing that an effective viscosity describing momentum transport in the x direction can be derived in the presence of the shear-driven fluctuations. The spatial profiles of the excited modes are evaluated from the solution of the appropriate dispersion equation. A model is proposed to describe the nonlinear evolution of the instability while ensuring that the characteristics of the turbulent fluctuation spectra resulting from it are consistent with those of the observed spectra.

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