Artificial excitation and propagation of ultra-low frequency signals in the polar ionosphere

Abstract

This paper has established a relatively comprehensive model for ultra-low frequency (ULF) current induced by thermal pressure gradients and its propagation. In the ULF current excitation model, we decomposed the current into a constant term unaffected by altitude and a product with a function significantly influenced by altitude. Combining this with the EISCAT background, we determined that for modulation frequencies below 5 Hz, the optimal height for ULF current excitation corresponds to the critical frequency height. We calculated the ionospheric currents at heating altitudes of 332 km for modulation frequencies of 5 Hz; the corresponding maximum currents were 1.03 × 10−10 A·m−2. By incorporating the current into the ULF waves propagation model based on magnetoionic theory, we found that the electromagnetic field energy is mainly concentrated in the horizontal direction, indicating that the energy primarily propagates outward through magnetosonic waves. The dominant components are the electric field component Ey and the magnetic field component Bz, whose maximum values reached 1.1 μV·m−1 and 1.5 pT. Unfortunately, magnetosonic waves cannot propagate downward due to the sharp variation in the real part of the refractive index between 200 and 300 km. However, the shear Alfvén waves component By can propagate downward, and there is still an intensity of approximately 0.1 pT at the bottom of the ionosphere, which is because the refractive index of shear Alfvén waves is most uniform in the parallel magnetic field direction, allowing By to propagate parallel to the magnetic field effectively.