W. Bernstein

Laboratory Simulation of Injection Particle Beams in the Ionosphere

When Hess (1971) and Winckler (Hendrickson et al., 1971) carried out the first rocket-borne, electron beam injection experiments, the results appeared to be consistent in some ways with the concept that the beam electrons demonstrated single particle behavior over their entire trajectory from injection to detection. These results were somewhat surprising; it was expected that beam plasma instabilities would occur and significantly modify the beam characteristics. Nevertheless, the success of the flight experiments led to the design of several experiments in which electron beams would be used as non-perturbing remote probes in magnetospheric and auroral studies. A fairly complete listing and description is given in USRA (1976). Generally, these experiments assumed single particle motion at even greater power levels than had been used in the rocket experiments.

Recent Observations of Beam Plasma Interactions in the Ionosphere and a Comparison with Laboratory Studies of the Beam Plasma Discharge

NASA Rocket 27:010 AE (E∥B) launched April 9, 1978 from the Churchill Research Range, carried a modest accelerator which injected programmed electron beams of <100 ma at 2 and 4 kV into the ionospheric plasma over the altitude range 120–240 km. A major objective of this experiment was the study of beam-plasma interactions and the possible identification of the ignition of the Beam-Plasma Discharge which has been intensively studied in laboratory configurations.