The effects of ions on magneto-ionic characteristic polarization

There is some evidence for the presence of large numbers of ions in the E-region. Considering the recent increase in the precision with which sky-wave polarization measurements can be made, it seems desirable to flu a gap in the usual magneto-ionic theory by investigating the effect on the theoretical characteristic polarizations of introducing a mixture of ions and electrons into the calculations. A general formula is derived as an extension of the magneto-ionic polarization expression of Goubau. The 100 kc and 300 kc polarizations predicted by this formula have been plotted for a neutral mixture of oxygen ions, nitrogen ions, and electrons. The plots show that polarizations are possible in a mixture that cannot occur when only electrons are present. They also show that characteristic polarizations in a mixture do not define the medium parameters as completely as they do with electrons only. Another interesting feature is that the polarizations in a mixture depend on the relative numbers of each type of charged particle but seem not to depend on the actual charge density when the proportion of electrons is small.