ULF, ELF and VLF generation with HF transmissions from ionospheric heaters

Creation of virtual ULF/ELF/VLF antennas

Polar electrojet heating and Ionospheric Current Drive heating

 

There are two ways to heat the ionosphere and perform ELF generation: polar electrojet heating and ionospheric current drive heating

 

Ionospheric heaters are powerful HF transmitters (2.8-10 MHz) that induce controlled temporary modification to the electron temperature at desired altitude. Creation of virtual ULF/ELF/VLF antennas.

 

 

Selected sources cited at "ELF Generation 101" (video/slides) by Climate Viewer managed by J. Lee, including mainly the presentation and discussion of three slides from D. Papadopoulos' 2013 presentation. Suggested reading: Papadopoulos et al 2011.

 

 

Polar electrojet (PEJ) heating (modulation)

 

Reference: https://youtu.be/lu0_lTXHICs?t=1067

Ionosphere heaters at high latitudes (near polar regions), such as EISCAT, HAARP and HIPAS, can use the polar electrojet, a naturally-occurring electric current in the D/E region (70-90 Km) of the ionosphere as both an amplifier and a virtual antenna. The polar electrojet is depicted in Climate 3D Viewer in Figure 1. 

 

There also exists an equatorial electrojet. The mid-latitude Arecibo heater (Puerto Rico) and the equatorial Jicamarca heater (Peru) have  used the equatorial electrojet (Cohen et al 2010, Lunnen et al 1984).

 

 

 

Figure 1: Climate 3D viewer screen capture showing the electrojet in the polar region.

 

 

 

 

 

Reference: https://youtu.be/lu0_lTXHICs?t=1143 (reads section "Polar electrojet (PEJ) heating")

The electrojet consists of natural currents which flow in the auroral and equatorial ionosphere at the E region which is found at approximately 100 Km (Figure 2). The high frequency (HF) signal of the ionospheric heater modulated at ELF/VLF frequencies is directed to the electrojet where it performs heating and thereby causes changes in the local conductivity of the ionosphere (Figure 2). As a result, the electrojet current is caused to vary at the same ELF/VLF rate. A virtual antenna is created in the E region which radiates at the frequency of the modulation. Propagating ELF/VLF waves are radiated by this virtual antenna. Polar electrojet heating will produce waves from 0.001 Hz to 20 KHz with a 2.8 to 8 KHz peak efficiency.

 

Different modulation techniques exist such as amplitude modulation (changing the intensity of the beam), beam painting (similar to using the beam to create strokes on the ionospheric canvas) and geometric modulation (when geometric patterns are formed with the beam) (Guo et al 2021 - Figure 4).

 

 

 

Figure 2: Slide 5 from D. Papadopoulos' presentation (PDF).

 

 

 

 

Ionospheric Current Drive (ICD) heating

 

Reference: https://youtu.be/lu0_lTXHICs?t=1267 (reads section "Ionospheric Current Drive (ICD) heating")

"Both high latitude and equatorial ionospheric heaters may use an alternate method to produce UFL/ELF waves that does not require the electrojet."
 
F-region heating leads to generation of magnetosonic (MS) waves as demonstrated in Figure 3. This is similar to having an antenna represented in the figure by the oval shape that radiates MS waves (yellow lines). The MS waves travel downwards in the E-region where they drive a Hall current. The Hall current generates ELF waves into the Earth-ionosphere waveguide and shear Alfvén waves (SAW) upwards in the magnetosphere (Papadopoulos et al. 2011). In other words, the Hall current acts as a secondary antenna or a virtual antenna which plays the role that had the electrojet in the case of the polar electrojet heating. MS and SAW waves are shown in Figure 5. Ionospheric drive allows the generation of frequencies up to 60-70 Hz.
 
 

Figure 3: Slide 9 from D. Papadopoulos' presentation (PDF). Figure 1 from Papadopoulos et al. 2011. 

 

 

 

Figure 4: From http://roma2.rm.ingv.it/en/themes/22/magnetic_pulsations

 

Reference: https://youtu.be/lu0_lTXHICs?t=1312 

"They're going to heat it way out here (arrow on Fig. 4). Now the MS (magnetosonic) waves, the very low frequency waves are what's creating the antenna now. They're not actually just powering the ionosphere - the polar electric jet - they're shooting it way out here into space; and these waves are traveling down and creating another antenna. This is very important and I know this is high-level but there are people who are going to understand this that need to hear it and they will do something about it I am sure."

 

There is a lot of debate on the internet about who's making a specific few Hertz tone.
"This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is HAARP producing it, so guys over there on Tromsø, Stanford VLF, please get that updated".

 

"What they're doing is creating a virtual antenna in the sky that radiates extremely low-frequency signals that travel worldwide and can be heard in the deepest depths of our oceans."

 

"When you move it up here (arrow on Fig. 4), a standing wave can occur along these magnetic field lines and compressive magnetohydrodynamic waves, (that is) magnetosonic waves come straight through". "Magnetosonic are the lowest of low frequencies". Cf. fractions of a Hertz. 
 
Magnetohydrodynamic waves within the Earth's magnetosphere are geomagnetic pulsations. They are distinguished in magnetosonic waves (compressive) and Alfén waves (incompressible).
 
It is mentioned that when they turn HAARP on, the spectrum upon HAARP "ULF start" shows: "noise increase by 10 to 20 decibels between 0.7 to 10 Hertz". It has been alleged that covert signals may escape attention because signal processing personnel would consider that this "new" noise represents background noise and would therfore adjust the baseline accordingly.
 
 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5: Magnetostatic waves and shear Alfvén waves. Slide 14 from D. Papadopoulos' presentation (PDF).

 

 

 

Ionospheric Current Drive (ICD) heating can produce 0.1 Hz magnetosonic (MS) waves, 2.5 Hz shear Alfvén waves (SAW) and ULF/ELF waves up to 60-70 Hz (Figure 5).

 

Note on the ionospheric Alfvén resonator (IAR) and fast magnetosonic (FMS) waveguide.

 

 

 

Injection of ULF/ELF/VLF waves within field-aligned ducts, in the L-shell that spans the heater

Transmitted electromagnetic radiation may propagate along the magnetic field lines of the Earth termed L-shells (ducted propagation)

 

(Note: A specific set of Earth's magnetic field lines are described with L-shells (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-shell) i.e. ellipsoids similar to those of Fig.6).
 
https://youtu.be/lu0_lTXHICs?t=956 "If you fire a shot off into space and you're up here at the North Pole (Figure 6, top right, cf. EISCAT L-shell 5.8), it's going to travel a long distance and come down and land at the South Pole."
 
Figure 6 allows us to compare the landing points or congugate points for ionospheric heaters located on different shells, such as EISCAT(5.8), HAARP (4.9) and SURA (2.5). The conjugate point for HAARP is found near the shore of Australia.
 

 

 

 

Figure 6: Slide 15 from D. Papadopoulos' presentation (PDF).

 

"Then some of it bounces off - and, you know, aggravates the heads of people all in this region - then bounces back into space. Now, once it makes it all the way back to HAARP, that's called a hop. Now why am I telling you this? Well, they have a thing out here in the middle of the ocean called the HAARP buoy and it's part of the one-hop-experiment." "It's a VLF buoy, so basically (at) the place where HAARP lands in the ocean, they put a receiver out there to listen for it. And that conjugate point is right off the shore of Australia." (Stanford VLF buoy shown in Figure 7.)

 

 

Figure 7: Figure 1 from Golkowski M. et al, 2018 illustrating ducted propagation excited by the HAARP HF heater and image of Stanfold VLF buoy (HAARP receiver).

 
A useful reference on ducting is the study by Rietveld et al 2020 which proposes that HF-induced field-aligned irregularities (tens to hundreds of metres scale) act to refract the radar signals along the magnetic field, thereby acting as a guide.
 
An additional interesting slide from D. Papadopoulos presentation referring to Field Align Scatter (FAS) and raising the maximal usable frequency (MUF) to GHz is presented in Figure 8.
 
 
 
 

 

Figure 8: Raising maximal usable frequency (MUF) to GHz.  Field-aligned scatter (FAS). Platteville FAS reference. Slide 65 from D. Papadopoulos' presentation (PDF).

 

 

 

Interference (beat-wave) generation of VLF waves

 

It is possible to generate VLF waves by using interference between two different ionospheric heaters or two subarrays of a heater in which case we refer to "split-beam". This is described by Kuo et al (2012). A mobile source of VLF waves can be produced in this way.

 

The mechanism known as "excitation of the thermal cubic nonlinearity" (Moore et al 2013) may represent an interference case.

 

 

 

Broadband VLF wave generation by continuous HF heating linked to whistler wave generation

 

Broadband VLF waves in the frequency range of 7–10 KHz and 15–19 KHz, generated by F region continuous HF ionospheric heating in the absence of electrojet currents, were detected by satellite and are believed to have been generated by LH-to-whistler mode conversion (Vartanyan et al 2017).

 

 

Applications of VLF waves

 

The use of VLF waves is important for the Navy and especially for submarine communications. The Navy’s VLF antenna in Cutler, Maine occupies 2000 acres on a peninsula and consists of 26 towers 850 to 1000ft high. It consumes approximately 20 MW from a dedicated power plant (ref). It is composed of two umbrella or snowflake arrays (Wikipedia).

 

 

 

ELF/VLF Electromagnetic Phenomena

 

From https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6050782:

"Very Low Frequency (VLF, 3-30 kHz) and Extremely Low Frequency (ELF, 3-3000 Hz) electromagnetic waves are generated by various natural and anthropogenic processes in the lower atmosphere. On a global basis by far the most significant source is ELF/VLF radiation from lightning propagating in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide."

 

I. Whistlers - source is lightning.

 

II. ELF/VLF Emissions - not associated with lightning.

1. Continuous or noise-like. Cf. "hiss".

2. Discrete. Cf. "chorus"

 

III. Interactions Between Whistlers and ELF/VLF Emissions.

 

IV. Power Line Harmonic Radiation (PLHR)

"ELF-VLF harmonic radiation from power systems penetrates the ionosphere and propagates into the inner magnetosphere, where it is amplified by unstable ambient plasma and may take the form of a self-sustained ELF-VLF emission." https://www.sgo.fi/Publications/SGO/thesis/ManninenJyrki.pdf

 

A primer is available starting at e-page 15 of the reference https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/4549/.

 

Wikipedia references:

Whistler | VLF | 1 kHz to 30 kHz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler_(radio)

Hiss | ELF-VLF | 300 Hz – 10 kHz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiss_(electromagnetic)

Chorus | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_chorus_(electromagnetic)

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