Whistler Wave Propagation Through the Ionosphere of Venus

Abstract

We investigate the attenuation of whistler waves generated by hypotetical Venusian lightning occurring at the altitude of the cloud layer under different ionospheric conditions. We use the Stanford full-wave method for stratified media of Lehtinen and Inan (2008) to model wave propagation through the ionosphere of Venus. This method calculates the electromagnetic field created by an arbitrary source in a plane-stratified medium (i.e., uniform in the horizontal direction). We see that the existence of holes in electronic densities and the magnetic field configuration caused by solar wind play an important role in the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the Venusian ionosphere.