Modeling of Kilometer-Scale Ionospheric Irregularities at Mars

Recently, kilometer-scale Martian ionospheric irregularities have been measured by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission (Fowler et al., 2020). In this study, we carried out a simulation of kilometer-scale ionospheric irregularities at Mars. A uniform zonal neutral wind was adopted in this model, and the seeding source is the cosinusoidal perturbation of the plasma density. Results show that the vertical electric field shear could be induced when the plasma density perturbation occurred. The vertical electric field shear causes the velocity shear of the plasma between the topside and bottomside ionosphere. Then, the velocity shear of the plasma between the topside and bottomside ionosphere could produce smaller-scale (kilometer-scale) ionospheric irregularities than the previous simulation (Jiang et al., 2021). The kilometer-scale variations in the plasma density and magnetic field profiles (along the altitude) are comparable with observations.