ELF/VLF Observations in the Southern Pacific Ocean

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

The proposal seeks the logistical support to install and operate an ELF/VLF receiver system on the USAP's ship "Nathaniel B. Palmer" for measuring whistler "one-hop" signals injected in the Earth's magnetosphere by the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) ionospheric heater facility, funded by the Office of Naval Research and deployed in Gakona Alaska. During its annual austral summer traverses between Christchurch and McMurdo Station, "Nathaniel B. Palmer" passes through a region that is geomagnetically conjugate to the HAARP location. During the ship's traverses through the ~300-km long conjugate area (at ~1000 km south-east of New Zealand), the HAARP facility in Alaska will operate at full-power, launching ELF/VLF waves into the magnetosphere, which then propagate along the geomagnetic field lines to the southern hemisphere, being amplified along their wave due to cyclotron resonance interactions with energetic electrons of the magnetospheric plasma. The intellectual merit of the proposed program lies in the importance of understanding how the artificially-induced magnetospheric waves might trigger particle emissions and loss processes from the Earth's radiation belts, both during quiet and geomagnetically disturbed periods. The broader impacts resulting from the proposed activity will include better understanding of energetic electron radiation in near-Earth space, which is detrimental to electronics on orbiting satellites, and the possible mitigation of effects of high-energy radiation via wave-particle interactions.