Multiscale equatorial electrojet turbulence: Baseline 2-D model

The spatial and spectral characteristics of the turbulent plasma density, electric fields, and ion drift in ionospheric E region are studied using a new set of nonlinear plasma fluid equations. The fluid model combines both Farley-Buneman (Type-I) and Gradient-Drift (Type-II) plasma instabilities in the equatorial electrojet. In our unified model of the plasma instabilities, we include the ion viscosity in the ion momentum equation and electron inertia in the electron momentum equation. These two terms play an important role in stabilizing the growing modes in the linear regime and in driving the Farley-Buneman instability into the saturation state. The simulation results show good agreements with a number of features of rocket and radar observations, such as (1) saturation of plasma density perturbations depends on the solar condition and reaches 7-15% relative to the background, (2) fluctuation of the horizontal secondary electric field reaches 8-15 mV/m, (3) stabilization of the phase velocity of the perturbed density wave around the value of the ion-acoustic speed inside the electrojet, (4) up-down asymmetry in the vertical fluxes of the plasma density, (5) east-west asymmetry of the plasma zonal drifts, and (6) generation of small scale of the order of meter scale lengths irregularities embedded in large-scale structures. Spectral analysis of the density fluctuations reveals the energy cascade due to the nonlinear coupling between structures of different scales. The break-up of the large-scale structures into small-scale structures explains the disappearance of Type-II echoes in the presence of Type-I instabilities.