Dynamics of electron fluxes in the near-rocket region in the ARAKS experiment

In the ARAKS experiment, electron pulses were injected into the ionosphere from onboard a rocket. For different series of pulses, the initial energy of electrons was 27 and 15 keV and the current strength was ∼0.5 A. On board the rocket, the distributions of electron fluxes directed toward the rocket were measured using the retarding potential by the electron energy up to 3000 eV. In this work, it is shown that the appearance of extreme values of the intensity of electron fluxes higher than 200 eV at the tail of the electron energy distribution can be explained by the nonmonotonic acceleration of electrons in the fields of electrostatic turbulence. The dynamics of electron and ion fluxes can be influenced by the polarization drift. It should be noted that extreme values of the flux intensities were not observed at heights lower than 130 km. This can be connected with the suppression of electrostatic oscillations by collisions of electrons with ionospheric components.