Cavitating Langmuir Turbulence in the Terrestrial Aurora

Abstract

Langmuir cavitons have been artificially produced in the earth's ionosphere, but evidence of naturally-occurring cavitation has been elusive. By measuring and modeling the spectra of electrostatic plasma modes, we show that natural cavitating, or strong, Langmuir turbulence does occur in the ionosphere, via a process in which a beam of auroral electrons drives Langmuir waves, which in turn produce cascading Langmuir and ion-acoustic excitations and cavitating Langmuir turbulence. The data presented here are the first direct evidence of cavitating Langmuir turbulence occurring naturally in any space or astrophysical plasma.

4 pages, 4 figures, published in PRL on 9 March 2012 http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.105003