Studies of Plasma Instabilities Excited by Ground-Based High Power HF (Heating) Facilities and of X and Gamma Ray Emission in Runaway Breakdown Processes

摘要

This report results from a contract tasking P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute as follows: The investigation will focus on how high power HF radio waves and quasistationary electric field interact with collisional plasmas, such as the earth's ionosphere or thunderstorm atmosphere. The aim of this proposal to investigate: 1. The interaction of Langmuir turbulence with surrounding ionospheric plasma determining kinetics of thermal and suprathermal electrons; 2. The optic emission of suprathermal electrons; 3. The effect of ionospheric drifts on the generation of field aligned small scale striations; 4. The runaway breakdown process in inhomogeneous thunderstorm electric field; 5. X-ray emission in different gases due to runaway breakdown phenomena in a laboratory cyclotron installation; 6. An influence of combined effects of runaway breakdown and cosmic rays on lightning processes in thunderstorm atmosphere.