Parameters of large-scale thermal disturbances of near-Earth plasma during implementation of promising power levels of the Sura mid-latitude heating facility

Background. The generation and development of experimental facilities for research in the field of near-Earth plasma physics is an extremely urgent task. The Sura short-wave heating stand is the only operating mid-latitude research facility in the world on the active effect on the Earth’s ionosphere. The new physical results obtained at the HAARP, which has a higher transmitter radiation power, stimulate work to assess the possibilities of upgrade and determine the achievable parameters of near-Earth plasma perturbations for other facilities including the Sura stand. Aim. Numerical simulation and analysis of achievable parameters of large-scale thermal disturbances of near-Earth plasma during facility upgrading and promising power levels implementation of the Sura stand. Methods. The simulation was conducted using open source SAMI2 code supplemented by an upgraded heating source model using direct calculation of the abnormal absorption coefficient to approximate the cold plasma at the Gaussian spectrum of elongated inhomogeneities. Results. Exposure results for both daytime and late evening hours were investigated. For daytime conditions it was obtained that the promising power levels implementation at the Sura facility results in an almost twofold increase of the density and electrons temperature perturbations in the artificial duct region at the Earth’s outer ionosphere heights. For late evening conditions it is obtained that the upgrade of the heating facility also results in a twofold increase of electron temperature perturbations. At the same time, the increase of the electron density relative perturbations level is not so significant and at most 20% relative to the actual facility characteristics. Conclusion. It has been shown that the generated thermal perturbation parameters are non-linearly dependent on the radiation power of the pump wave and their growth is saturated due to the plasma redistribution in the abnormal absorption region.