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Atomic oxygen concentrations in the auroral thermosphere: Application of a thermospheric temperature criterion
Author(s) -
Shepherd G. G.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/gl011i011p01117
Subject(s) - thermosphere , quenching (fluorescence) , atomic oxygen , oxygen , altitude (triangle) , atmospheric sciences , reaction rate constant , analytical chemistry (journal) , atomic physics , materials science , computational physics , environmental science , physics , chemistry , ionosphere , environmental chemistry , geophysics , kinetics , mathematics , optics , fluorescence , geometry , quantum mechanics
The quenching of N 2 (A³∑ u + ) by atomic oxygen in the auroral thermosphere offers an attractive method of determining atomic oxygen concentrations, using the emission rate ratio of the N 2 Second Positive bands and the N 2 Vegard‐Kaplan bands. In the first applications of this method it was necessary to derive the quenching rate constant, the production rate ratio and the 0 profile from the measurement of emission rate ratio versus altitude. Even with more recent laboratory measurements of the quenching rates, different analyses of the same datasets gave rise to conflicting results. In this paper the consequences of including a requirement of diffusive equilibrium are considered; it is concluded that at times the 0 concentration at 130 km can be lower than that of CIRA 72 by a factor of 5, while at other times it can agree with the CIRA model.