Study on Reflectivity and Wavenumber Occurring Polar Mesosphere Summer Echoes

Abstract

Polar Mesosphere Summer Echoes (PMSE) are very strong radar echoes near the polar mesopause at local summer. PMSE have been approved to be associated with charged dust or aerosols in the dusty ionosphere. In the paper, the differential scattering cross section based on Born approximation in dusty plasma is derived, and the backscattering cross section per unit volume in published papers are summarized. Comparing the two results between the differential scattering cross section and the backscattering cross section per unit volume, one finds that the statistically experimental conclusion can be verified by the theoretical result. The results show that the reflectivity is inverse proportional to the fourth power of the wavenumber and charged dust grains play an important role in the occurrence of PMSE. The scattering of electromagnetic waves on charged dust particles may be a tool to explore the generation mechanism of PMSE.