Nonlinear Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, atmospheric gravity waves and equatorial spread F

Details Nonlinear Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, atmospheric gravity waves and equatorial spread F Nonlinear Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, atmospheric gravity waves and equatorial spread F

Sep 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993jgr....9815631h&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 98, no. A9, p. 15,631-15,642.

Physics

31

F Region, Gravity Waves, Ionospheric Drift, Taylor Instability, Computerized Simulation, Electric Fields, Ionospheric Electron Density, Plasma Density

Scientific paper

Although it is generally accepted that equatorial spread F (ESF) is due to nonlinear evolution of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, a number of important properties of the process remain unexplained. In particular, we investigate two as yet unexplained features of ESF: the common dominance of very large scale features (above 20 km) and their large amplitude. Although associated for years with spread F we show here for the first time that atmospheric gravity waves can initiate the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. If the amplitude of the seed gravity wave is large enough, the relative plasma density perturbations can reach 50 percent or more, implying essentially no saturation. The analysis presented here demonstrates the possibility that large-scale spread F is triggered by gravity waves with the Rayleigh-Taylor instability as a source of amplification. It is found that the condition for explosive growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor modes can be satisfied in the ionospheric F region. We propose that the explosive mode coupling of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability is a possible mechanism for production of large-amplitude bottomside sinusoidal structures.

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