Rayleigh-Taylor Instability Development in the Equatorial Ionosphere and a Geometry of an Initial Irregularity

Abstract

In this paper, we performed a numerical simulation for the conditions of the equatorial F‑region of the Earth’s ionosphere using the two-dimensional electrodynamically consistent mathematical MI2 model. The development time of ionospheric bubbles is shown to depend sufficiently strongly on the vertical scale and less strongly on the horizontal scale of the initial irregularity. Ionospheric bubbles developed more slowly at the generation of instability by increasing the plasma concentration than by depleting a plasma. On increasing the initial irregularity scale, three metric thresholds are experimentally found.