Naturally Enhanced Ion Acoustic Lines with the Poker Flat AMISR radar

Strømme, A.1,2 and Semeter, J.3

1 EISCAT Scientific Association, Longyearbyen, Norway
2 SRI International, Menlo Park, California, USA
3 Boston University, Boston, USA

The study of Naturally Enhanced Ion Acoustic Lines (NEIALs) have become one of the key studies for EISCAT both in the polar cusp using the EISCAT Svalbard Radar (ESR), and in the auroral zone, using the EISCAT UHF and VHF systems. Still many questions regarding the temporal and spatial extent of the NEIAL events remain unanswered. The new Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar (AMISR) in Poker Flat, Alaska is the first phased array Incoherent Scatter Radar at high latitudes, and by taking advantage of its possibility of (almost) simultaneous looking directions, we can resolve some of the space time ambiguity associated with NEIALs. During the night of the 23. March 2007, a period of NEIALs occurred. The radar ran in a 10 position mode with 9 beams in a narrow quadratic grid spaced by 3 degrees, plus a 10th position up B - slightly offset from the grid. Raw voltage data were sampled to allow for very high time resolution ACFs and spectra. Combining high time resolution data from multiple positions, we have the opportunity for the first time to look at the space-time ambiguity in the development of NEIALs.

During the campaign a narrow field of view imager from university of Boston were operational at the Davis science center close by the AMISR array. The night of the 23. March, the imager was pointed field aligned, and at around 11:20 UT - at the time of the radar NEIALs - a field of dynamic rays occurred at and near the zenith.

High time resolution multi position data from AMISR will be shown to follow the space and time development of the NEIAL event. This will also be correlated with high time resolution data from the imager.