Diffusion in the Ionosphere

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Abstract
Diffusion is treated by showing that the action of a medium on a diffusing gas is that of a dissipative force. When the theory is applied to an electrically neutral ionic gas in a gravitational field it is found that the mixture of positive and negative ions diffuses as a single gas because of the electrical polarization charges within the ionic cloud. In the presence of a magnetic field, the diffusion cannot be expressed in terms of the ionic density until the electrodynamical equations governing the flow of electrical current have been explicitly solved. Solutions are obtained for special cases which show that a strong magnetic field completely inhibits the diffusion due to concentration gradients in the transverse plane and has little effect on the diffusion due to the gravitational force.

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