Plasma fluctuations in the presence of random density and temperature irregularities

A theoretical approach for finding spectra of electrostatic fluctuations in a plasma with random density and temperature irregularities is developed. The approach is valid for nonequilibrium plasmas, in particular, when electrons and ions have different temperatures. Using these results, we calculated the spectrum of electron density fluctuations, which is necessary to interpret incoherent scattering experiments. It is shown that ignoring the random irregularities can introduce errors into the measurements of main plasma parameters, such as ambient density and temperatures. The calculated spectra are applied to experiments on the artificial ionosphere modification by high-power radio waves. A possible experimental method for estimating the intensity of random temperature irregularities in the artificially modified ionosphere is discussed.