Manifestation of the cotton-mouton effect in the ionosphere plasma Original Research Article

Polarization methods used to sound ionospheric plasma are based on the Faraday and Cotton-Mouton effects. While the Faraday effect (rotation of the polarization plane) covers almost the entire ray path, the Cotton-Mouton effect gives rise to local transformation of circularly polarized waves near a point of orthogonality of the ray and the Earthʹs magnetic field. Comparison of the input and output polarization of probing electromagnetic waves, emitted by a satellite and received by ground stations, can provide valuable information about local plasma parameters near the orthogonality point. This paper presents a theory of interaction of circular waves near this point based on the quasi-isotropic approximation (QIA) of geometrical optics and describes algorithms that can be used to retrieve local plasma parameters from polarization measurements. Experimental configurations to observe the Cotton-Mouton effect with linearly and arbitrarily polarized receivers are discussed.