On Cavitons Generated by the Nonlinear Plasma Waves in HF Heating Experiments at HAARP

Analysis of nonlinear plasma waves, formulated and applied for ionospheric HF heat-ing experiments, indicates that Langmuir/upper hybrid waves excited by parametric instabilities can evolve into traveling solitary waves accompanied by self-induced cavitons. These cavitons were explored by using a digisonde in fast mode. An iono-gram recorded two minutes after O-mode heater activation showed two distinct bumps in the virtual height spread, located slightly below the HF reflection and upper hybrid resonance heights. These heights are slightly below the excitation regions of Langmuir/upper hybrid PDIs by an O-mode HF heater.