The spatial and spectral characteristics of the turbulent plasma density, electric fields, and ion drift in ionospheric E region are studied using a new set of nonlinear plasma fluid equations. The fluid model combines both Farley-Buneman (Type-I) and Gradient-Drift (Type-II) plasma instabilities in the equatorial electrojet. In our unified model of the plasma instabilities, we include the ion viscosity in the ion momentum equation and electron inertia in the electron momentum equation. These two terms play an important role in stabilizing the growing modes in the linear regime and in driving the Farley-Buneman instability into the saturation state. The simulation results show good agreements with a number of features of rocket and radar observations, such as (1) saturation of plasma density perturbations depends on the solar condition and reaches 7-15% relative to the background, (2) fluctuation of the horizontal secondary electric field reaches 8-15 mV/m, (3) stabilization of the phase velocity of the perturbed density wave around the value of the ion-acoustic speed inside the electrojet, (4) "up-down" asymmetry in the vertical fluxes of the plasma density, (5) "east-west" asymmetry of the plasma zonal drifts, and (6) generation of small scale of the order of meter scale lengths irregularities embedded in large-scale structures. Spectral analysis of the density fluctuations reveals the energy cascade due to the nonlinear coupling between structures of different scales. The break-up of the large-scale structures into small-scale structures explains the disappearance of Type-II echoes in the presence of Type-I instabilities.

Nonlinear coupling of Farley-Buneman (FB) waves is studied using the method of modulational decay instabilities. Dispersion relation for the growth of the secondary Farley-Buneman waves has been derived. It is shown that the primary wave is unstable with respect to the modulational instability decay, producing the secondary waves with a finite flow angle with respect to the direction of the electron E×B flow. This process leads to the nonlinear spreading of the primary FB waves into the linearly stable region which is consistent with the previous numerical simulations and some observations.

Farley-Buneman modes are an example of the collisional instability, which is thought to be the dominant mechanism for the irregularities in low ionosphere region. Despite high collisionality due to electron-neutral and ion-neutral collisions, the kinetic effects associated with finite temperature are important for determination of the mode frequencies and growth rate. This is especially important for ion component that is largely unmagnetized due to low ion cyclotron frequency. The ion thermal effects are strongly pronounced for shorter wavelengths and are crucial for the growth rate cut-off at high wavenumbers. We develop an extended fluid model for ion dynamics to incorporate the effects of ion thermal motion. The model is based on the extended MHD model that includes the evolution equations for higher order moments such as ion viscosity and ion heat flux. We also develop the generalized Chapman-Enskog closure model that provides exact linear closures based on the linearized kinetic equation. The results of these models are compared and tested against the linear kinetic model. The dispersion of Farley-Buneman modes and growth rate behavior are investigated in the short wavelength region.

The nonlinear equation describing the Farley-Buneman (FB) waves in multispecies collisional plasmas is derived by employing the multiple-scale reduction analysis. It is shown that the presence of several ion species with different collisionalities and different ion masses removes the degeneracy of the nonlinear equation and generates the nonlinear terms resulting in wave steepening and wave breaking. This effect may be responsible for formation of one-dimensional coherent FB waves of a finite amplitude.