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NASA NTRS1985

Acceleration of energetic particles

Acceleration of some particles from the background plasma to highly superthermal energies is a common feature of collisionless shocks in interplanetary space. The complete in situ measurements of bulk flows, thermal plasma, electromagnetic waves and energetic particles available for interplanetary shocks both suggest and test the models of shock acceleration in the solar system and the rest of the universe. This tutorial will review the present state of shock acceleration theory. Scatter-free acceleration by grad B drift in the plasma electric field E = -V x B/c, and diffusive acceleration resulting from scattering by Alfven waves in the plasma on both sides of the shock are discussed. The diffusive theory in simple steady state gives power-law spectra, but also shows the effects of time-dependent shocks and injection rates, escape and other losses, the self-consistent Alfven wave spectra, and plasma flow fields affected by diffusive energetic particle acceleration.

Forman, M. A.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Effective propagation constants in dense random media under effective medium approximation

The effective medium approximation is applied to study the effective propagation constants in a dense random medium. The dyadic Green's function is introduced to establish the effective medium approximation formalism for electromagnetic waves. The multiple scattering equations and the Lippmann-Schwinger equations for the transition operator are obtained in the configuration average form. The dispersion equations of multiple scattering is derived by using a standard method in quantum mechanics. To obtain an expression for the effective propagation constants the matrix elements of the configuration average dyadic transiton operator are calculated in momentum representation. Numerical illustations are carried out to demonstrate the difference in the effective propagation constants between the use of this approximation and the well-known quasi-crystalline approximation. A comparison is made with measured loss tangent in dry snow.

Zhu, P. Y.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Retrieval of surface roughness parameters from dual-frequency measurements of radar backscattering coefficients

The use of dual-frequency data of backscattering coefficients at a fixed angle to estimate surface roughness parameters is evaluated. Radar backscattering coefficients at 1.5 and 4.25 GHz are calculated using a model based on Kirchhoff approximation of electromagnetic wave scatttering from a rough soil surface. Plots of the calculated backscattering coefficients for Kansas soil moisture contents at the C- and L-band frequencies and HH polarization are analyzed. The effects of changes in correlation length on the backscattering coefficients are investigated. The calculated backscattering coefficients are compared with scatterometer data collected at 1.5 and 4.25 GHz, and it is detected that the model and field data correlate well. The data reveal that it is possible to retrieve the surface roughness parameters from measured radar data.

Mo, Tsan↗

NASA NTRS1987

Power and charge dissipation from an electrodynamic tether

The Plasma Motor-Generator project utilizes the influence of the geomagnetic field on a conductive tether attached to a LEO spacecraft to provide a reversible conversion of orbital energy into electrical energy. The behavior of the current into the ionospheric plasma under the influence of the geomagnetic field is of significant experimental and theoretical interest. Theoretical calculations are reviewed which start from Maxwell's equations and treat the ionospheric plasma as a linear dielectric medium. These calculations show a charge emitting tether moving in a magnetic field will generate electromagnetic waves in the plasma which carry the charge in the direction of the magnetic field. The ratio of the tether's speed to the ion cyclotron frequency which is about 25 m for a LEO is a characteristic length for the phenomena. Whereas for the dimensions of the contact plasma much larger than this value the waves are the conventional Alfven waves, when the dimensions are comparable or smaller, diffraction effects occur similar to those associated with Fresnel diffraction in optics. The power required to excite these waves for a given tether current is used to estimate the impedance associated with this mode of charge dissipation.

Hite, Gerald E.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Time-domain robotic vision application

The quest for the highest resolution microwaves imaging and the principle of time-domain imaging is the primary motivation for recent developments in time-domain techniques. With the present technology fast time varying signals can now be measured and recorded both in magnitude and in phase. It has also enhanced the ability to extract relevant details concerning the scattering object. In the past, the inference of object geometry or shape from scattered signals has received substantial attention in radar technology. Various inverse scattering theories were proposed to develop analytical solutions to this problem. Furthermore, the random inversion, frequenty swept holography, and the synthetic radar imaging, all of which have two things in common: the physical optic far-field approximation and the utilization of the channels as an extra physical dimension, were also advanced significantly. Despite the inherent vectorial nature of electromagnetic waves, these scalar treatments have brought forth some promising results in practice with notable examples in subsurface and structure sounding. The use of time-domain imaging for space robotic vision applications was proposed. A multisensor approach to vision was shown to have several advantages over the video-only approach.

Tolliver, C. L.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Self-modulational formation of pulsar microstructures

A nonlinear plasma theory for self modulation of pulsar radio pulses is discussed. A nonlinear Schroedinger equation is derived for strong electromagnetic waves propagating in an electron positron plasma. The nonlinearities arising from wave intensity induced particle mass variation may excite the modulational instability of circularly and linearly polarized pulsar radiation. The resulting wave envelopes can take the form of periodic wave trains or solitons. These nonlinear stationary waveforms may account for the formation of pulsar microstructures.

Chian, A. C.-L.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Evolution of the axial electron cyclotron maser instability, with applications to solar microwave spikes

The nonlinear evolution of cyclotron radiation from streaming and gyrating electrons in an external magnetic field is analyzed. The nonlinear dynamics of both the fields and the particles are treated fully relativistically and self-consistently. The model includes a background plasma and electrostatic effects. The analytical and numerical results show that a substantial portion of the beam particle energy can be converted to electromagnetic wave energy at frequencies far above the electron cyclotron frequency. In general, the excited radiation can propagate parallel to the magnetic field and, hence, escape gyrothermal absorption at higher cyclotron harmonics. The high-frequency Doppler-shifted cyclotron instability can have saturation efficiencies far higher than those associated with well-known instabilities of the electron cyclotron maser type. Although the analysis is general, the possibility of using this model to explain the intense radio emission observed from the sun is explored in detail.

Vlahos, Loukas↗

NASA NTRS1987

The windows of SETI - Frequency and time in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Since interstellar travel is not economically possible on the time scale of a human lifetime, communication with extraterrestrials can be achieved only by sending some form of energy or matter across space; photons (electromagnetic waves) are best. Of particular interest to SETI is the region from about 1,000-60,000 MHz known as the free-space microwave window. During the course of NASA's Cyclops program, it was pointed out that the hydrogen and hydroxyl lines bounded a band in which there were no other known lines. The threatened loss of the microwave window to earth-based services is discussed.

Oliver, Bernard M.↗

NASA NTRS1987

A kinetic study of solar wind mass loading and cometary bow shocks

The kinetic processes associated with solar wind mass loading due to pickup of cometary ions, and the formation of cometary bow shocks were investigated numerically using a hybrid simulation code described by Leroy et al. (1981), in which solar wind protons and heavy cometary ions are treated kinetically, but the electrons are treated as a massless fluid. It was found that the solar wind decelaration and pickup of cometary ions take place through both the macroscopic electromagnetic fields embedded in the solar wind and the microscopic field associated with low-frequency electromagnetic waves that are generated by the unstable velocity distribution function of the cometary ions. The results of the main simulation runs at various cone angles are described and compared with the recent observations of comets Giacobini-Zinner and Halley.

Omidi, N.↗

NASA NTRS1988

A semiquantitative theory for the 2f(p) radiation observed upstream from the earth's bow shock

In this paper, Cairns and Melrose's (1985) theory for the second harmonic of the plasma frequency f(p), i,e, 2f(p) radiation, is extended into a detailed semiquantitative theory for the 2f(p) radiation observed upstream from the earth's bow shock. It is shown that the 2f(p) radiation grows by the process L + L going to T + S (where L, S, and T denote Langmuir, ion acoustic, and transverse electromagnetic waves, respectively), proceeding in two 3-wave steps in the two wings of the foreshock. The theory developed here is consistent with all the available wave data.

Cairns, Iver H.↗

NASA NTRS1988

A composite L-band HH radar backscattering model for coniferous forest stands

The radar backscattering model developed by Richards et al. (1987), has been improved and further tested in this research. The trunk term may now be calculated from the exact solution to the electromagnetic wave equations instead of the corner reflector equation. Rough surface models have been introduced into the radar model, so that the forward reflectance and the backscattering from the ground surface are now calculated from the same model and, thus, are consistent. The number of trees in an individual pixel is assumed to be Poisson distributed, with tree height in a stand log-normally distributed. The simulated results show that the match of backscattering coefficients for eight forest stands between SIR-B image data and the simulated results are satisfying, and that the trunk term now seems to be convincingly established as the dominant term in the L-band HH radar return from coniferous forest stands.

Sun, Guoquing↗

NASA NTRS1988

Material parameter determination from scattering measurements

The electrical, macroscopic performance of isotropic material can generally be described through their constitutive scalar parameters, permittivity and permeability which are symbolically represented by epsilon and mu, respectively. These parameters relate the electric and magnetic flux densities to the electric and magnetic fields through the following relationships: (1) D=epsilonE; and (2) B=muH. It is through these parameters that the interaction of electromagnetic waves with material can be quantized in terms of reflection and transmission coefficients, and propagation and attenuation factors.

Dominek, A.↗

NASA NTRS1988

The extinction properties of forest components

The effect of each forest component on the extinction of electromagnetic waves is investigated by modeling the branches with finite cylinders, deciduous leaves with elliptic disks, and coniferous leaves with needles. The inner field is estimated by the field inside an infinitely long cylinder of similar properties for the branches, and by the Shifrin approximation for the leaves. For each forest component analytic expressions were derived for the extinction cross section via the forward scattering theorem and for ohmic and scattered losses. For branches, the variation of the extinction cross section obtained via the forward scattering theorem is illustrated numerically as a function of the branch radius and the imaginery part of its dielectric constant. It is compared with the measurements from a single branch. For the leaves, the forward scattering theorem gives value for the extinction cross section equal to the ohmic cross section.

Karam, M. A.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Time-domain imaging

The quest for the highest resolution microwave imaging and principle of time-domain imaging has been the primary motivation for recent developments in time-domain techniques. With the present technology, fast time varying signals can now be measured and recorded both in magnitude and in-phase. It has also enhanced our ability to extract relevant details concerning the scattering object. In the past, the interface of object geometry or shape for scattered signals has received substantial attention in radar technology. Various scattering theories were proposed to develop analytical solutions to this problem. Furthermore, the random inversion, frequency swept holography, and the synthetic radar imaging, have two things in common: (1) the physical optic far-field approximation, and (2) the utilization of channels as an extra physical dimension, were also advanced. Despite the inherent vectorial nature of electromagnetic waves, these scalar treatments have brought forth some promising results in practice with notable examples in subsurface and structure sounding. The development of time-domain techniques are studied through the theoretical aspects as well as experimental verification. The use of time-domain imaging for space robotic vision applications has been suggested.

Tolliver, C. L.↗

NASA NTRS1989

The meteor radar as a tool for upper atmosphere research

Meteor radar provide measurements of the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere neutral wind field by using the reflection of electromagnetic waves from meteor trails. These radars are relatively inexpensive and provide an excellent means of monitoring the mean winds and tides in the 80 to 100 km region. Recently new techniques were developed to detect meteor echoes from other ground based radar systems operating in the HF/VHF frequency range. The meteor echo information augments the data that are routinely collected by these radars. These new techniques are discussed.

Avery, S. K.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Theory and application of radiation boundary operators

A succinct unified review is provided of the theory of radiation boundary operators. With the recent introduction of the on-surface radiation condition (OSRC) method and the continued growth of finite-difference and finite-element techniques for modeling electromagnetic wave scattering problems, the understanding and use of radiation boundary operators has become increasingly important. Results are presented to illustrate the application of radiation boundary operators in both these areas. Recent OSRC results include analysis of the scattering behavior of both electrically small and large cylinders, a reactively loaded acoustic sphere, and a simple reentrant duct. Radiation boundary operator results include the demonstration of the effectiveness of higher-order operators in truncating finite-difference time-domain grids.

Moore, Thomas G.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Stability of a spherical shell distribution of pickup ions

The stability of a spherical shell (complete or incomplete) is investigated. The study is motivated by the research of cometary pickup ions. The present discussion is restricted to low-frequency electromagnetic waves propagating along the ambient magnetic field. It is found that a complete shell is stable, whereas an incomplete shell can be unstable. The numerical results are reported and discussed.

Freund, H. P.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Ray tracing planetary radio emissions

Planetary ray tracing calculations of free escaping electromagnetic waves are presented, with special attention given to calculations of the earth's auroral kilometric and continuum radiations and of the Jovian decametric and kilometric radiation. The technique is used to study the composition and propagation effects causing multiion resonances and shadow zones. Although results obtained for Jovian broadband kilometric radiation have been used to estimate the location of the source region, no unique solutions are obtained.

Green, James L.↗