HR: 0800h
AN: SA11A-0296    [Abstracts]
TI: The New Arecibo High Frequency Facility: Plans for the Science and the Facility
AU: * Sulzer, M P
EM: msulzer@naic.edu
AF: Arecibo Observatory, HC 3 Box 53995, Arecibo, PR 00612, United States
AU: Gonzalez, S A
EM: sixto@naic.edu
AF: Arecibo Observatory, HC 3 Box 53995, Arecibo, PR 00612, United States
AB: The large electric field that occurs when a high frequency (HF) high power radio wave reflects from an ionospheric layer stimulates several physical phenomena of interest in space and plasma physics. Their study requires diagnostics such as an incoherent scatter (IS) radar, optical imagers, photometers and spectrometers, and HF receivers. As the beginning of the construction phase of the new Arecibo HF facility approaches, it is time to review the science that can be best accomplished with the facility we can build and the diagnostics we have or can support. Since the closure of the Arecibo Islote HF facility less than a decade ago improvements in information storage and processing have transformed the way experiments proceed. It is now possible to store all the voltage samples from radar and radio experiments for off line analysis while also processing on line for monitoring purposes. Receivers are now digital and have vastly improved capabilities for handling the wide bandwidth high dynamic range signals that occur in these experiments. Improvements in computing capability have also had a huge impact on the studies of plasmas, enabling multidimensional simulations. Thus we expect theoretical work on plasma instabilities and, for example, the excitation of accelerated electrons to provide new opportunities for explaining the observations in greater detail. We will begin with a description of the planned facility and its characteristics, describing its strengths and weaknesses for these experiments. The new facility, unlike the Islote facility, will use the Arecibo main dish as its reflecting antenna. This is similar in idea to the original Arecibo HF facility from the 1970s, but the new facility will have about six times the transmitter power and will illuminate the dish using a wire grid sub-reflector. We will then describe the Arecibo diagnostics. These include the extraordinarily sensitive 430 MHz IS radar and a number of optical instruments. We also have the ability to host visitor instrumentation. Finally, we will present some results from the the Islote facility, and show what improvements will be possible with the new one.
DE: 7803 Active perturbation experiments
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting