Artificial particle and wave stimulation in the Trigger experiment

The Trigger experiment, designed to test the response of the auroral ionosphere to an impulsive release of a hot, dense plasma, and consisting of a sounding rocket payload (launched on February 11, 1977) divided into two parts, an instrumented diagnostic section and a cesium-doped high-explosive canister, is described. When the two sections were separated by about 1 km, the cesium high-explosive was ignited and the plasma around the payload was observed to increase briefly by a factor of 4 in density and a factor of 2 in temperature, upon which various particle and field phenomena occurred in rapid succession. A large increase in the field-aligned charged particle flux was observed over the approximate energy range of 10 eV to more than 300 keV, starting about 150 ms after the release and lasting about 1 second. A second particle burst started one second after the release and lasted for tens of seconds. A transient electric field pulse of 200 mV/m appeared just before the particle flux increase began.