Plasma instabilities and their simulations in the equatorial F region – Recent results

In this paper the developments made in the last five years on numerical simulation/modeling studies of a complex nighttime equatorial spread F phenomenon are reviewed. Emphasis is given to the Indian work and necessary comparisons are done with other international works on this field. Investigations involving the important aspects, namely the confinement of the plasma bubble in the bottomside of the ionosphere, linear and nonlinear effects of molecular ions in the development of plasma bubbles, interaction of two modes as a seed perturbation are discussed in detail. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.