Propagation of Extremely Low Frequency Waves Through the Ionosphere

The propagation features of extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves through the multicomponent ionospheric plasma are studied. It is shown that at relatively lower frequencies refractive index for right hand mode is higher than the left-hand mode, which is reversed at higher frequencies. The thermal temperature of plasma particle causes decrease in phase and group velocities of both right and left-hand modes. The crossover frequencies for different plasma models are computed and variation with ion concentration and thermal velocity is studied. Explicit expression for group velocity and travel time has been derived and studied numerically. Finally, we have presented simulation of the ion whistler spectrograms for Hydrogen, Helium and Oxygen ions present in the ionospheric plasma. The results are compared with the experimentally detected hydrogen and helium ion whistlers. The importance of the present study in the exploration of ionospheric plasma is illustrated.