Influences of the state of ionospheric background on ionospheric heating effects

Abstract

According to the well-performed ionospheric heating experiments at Arecibo in the low latitudes as well as at Tromsø in the high latitudes, the large-scale modification effects are simulated under an assumption of equivalent conditions, i.e., with the same effective radiative power and the same ratio of the heating frequency fHF to the critical frequency of ionospheric F region foF2. The findings are extensively exploited to verify the validation of our model by comparison to the experimental results. Further, a detailed study is carried out on the influences of the background electron density gradient as well as the ratio of fHF to foF2 on heating effects. Conclusions are drawn as follows: under certain conditions, a smaller electron density gradient of background ionospheric F region leads to a better ionospheric heating effect; during over-dense heating, the heating effects are enhanced if the ratio of fHF to foF2 increases, which is slightly limited by the resultant elevation of the reflection height. However, there might be a better ratio range with small values of the ratio of fHF to foF2, e.g., [0.5, 0.7] in the current study. Finally, we analyzed how to select heating parameters efficiently under adverse conditions so to obtain relatively effective results.