An experimental test of the ionosphere electron gas cooling rate by excitation of the fine structure of the ground state of atomic oxygen
An experimental test of the ionosphere electron gas cooling rate by excitation of the fine structure of the ground state of atomic oxygen
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原子氧基态精细结构激发电离层电子气冷却速率的实验测试
DOI：
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发表时间：
1982
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
G. P. Mantas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
H. Carlson;G. P. Mantas
原子氧基态的精细结构能级O（³P）的激发，目前被认为是底部电离层（大约在250公里以下）电子气的主要冷却机制。最近在理论激发截面计算的改进已将其幅度降低了约3倍。然而，这种冷却速度从未被测量过。这里报告的工作提出了第一个实验的结果，旨在测量这种冷却速率。该技术是测量低F区电子气的温度的时间弛豫率，它是人工加热后，从地面高功率高频发射机的无线电波。提出的实验测量有利于冷却速率对应于最低的目前可用的理论激发截面。然而，测量结果并不排除这样一种可能性，即即使是这一比率也可能高出相当大的一个系数。
Excitation of the fine structure levels of the ground state of atomic oxygen, O (³P), is currently believed to be the dominant cooling mechanism for the electron gas of the bottomside ionosphere (roughly, below 250 km). Recent refinements in theoretical excitation cross section calculations have reduced its magnitude by about a factor of 3. This cooling rate, however, has never been measured. The work reported here presents the results of the first experiment designed to measure this cooling rate. The technique is to measure the time relaxation rate of the temperature of the lower F region electron gas, after it is artifically heated by radio waves from a ground-based high-power HF transmitter. The experimental measurements presented favor the cooling rate corresponding to the lowest of the currently available theoretical excitation cross sections. The measurements do not, however, exclude the possibility that even this rate might still be too high by a considerable factor.