ICI3 derived wake potential and density data

The derived data described in the article 'Wake potential and wake effects on the ionospheric plasma density measurements with sounding rockets'.

Abstract:

In this paper, we develop a new method to systematically infer the wake-induced electrostatic potential around an object in a flowing plasma as measured by Langmuir probes. We argue that the main modulation of this potential is the plasma wake that creates a difference in density depletion between the electrons and the ions. We call this potential the wake potential. We show that it is possible to correlate the E-field measurements to the wake position, and with this calculate the wake potential assuming Boltzmann distributed electrons. Using density measurements from the ICI-3 ionospheric sounding rocket to asses this method, we find that the wake seems to be larger than expected, which might be explained by the presence of the booms. The wake potential is also affected by the 3-D structure of the wake, e.g., due to plasma flow that is not in the spin plane of the rocket. Furthermore, we show that this method is robust during a highly dynamic plasma, and can be used used to improve the quality of density measurements that are affected by the wake.